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A haunting, epic novel about betrayal, revenge, and redemption that follows three generations of Russian women, from the 1917 revolution to the last days of the Soviet Union, and the enduring love story at the center.
In a faraway kingdom, in a long-ago land...
...a young girl lived happily in Moscow with her family: a sister, a father, and an eccentric mother who liked to tell fairy tales and collect porcelain dolls.
One summer night, everything changed, and all that remained of that family were the girl and her mother.
Now, a decade later and studying at Oxford University, Rosie has an English name, a loving fiancé, and a promising future, but all she wants is to understand—and bury—the past. After her mother dies, Rosie returns to Russia, armed with little more than her mother’s strange folklore—and a single key.
What she uncovers is a devastating family history that spans the 1917 Revolution, the siege of Leningrad, Stalin’s purges, and beyond.
At the heart of this saga stands a young noblewoman, Tonya, as pretty as a porcelain doll, whose actions—and love for an idealistic man—will set off a sweeping story that reverberates across the century....
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
March 14, 2023 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593675588
- File size: 312114 KB
- Duration: 10:50:14
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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January 23, 2023
Loesch’s emotionally rich debut follows a woman seeking to uncover family secrets. In 1991 London, Rosie White, an Oxford postgrad, gets a position as a summer research assistant in Moscow. Before Rosie leaves, her mother gives her a key, once hidden in a porcelain doll, to open a drawer in the family’s Moscow home, which they fled from 14 years earlier after Rosie’s older sister and her father were murdered. In Moscow, Rosie finds a map in the drawer to a house called Otrada in Tula Province. In a parallel narrative set in 1917 Russia, early in the revolution, a young woman named Tonya marries wealthy factory owner Dmitry Lulikov, but becomes pregnant by a Bolshevik revolutionary. When Dmitry prevents Tonya from seeing her lover, she and her daughter return to her former home in Otrada. Loesch moves seamlessly between the expansive dual timelines, slowly establishing the connections between Rosie’s quest to solve the mystery of her family’s murders and Tonya’s efforts to survive the Bolshevik Revolution. Historical fiction fans will love this. Agent: Stephanie Abou, Massie McQuilkin Literary.
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