The Russian Concubine dazzled readers. Now, its gifted author delivers another sweeping historical novel.

Davinsky Labor Camp, Siberia, 1933: Only two things in this wretched place keep Sofia from giving up hope: the prospect of freedom, and the stories told by her friend and fellow prisoner Anna, of a charmed childhood in Petrograd, and her fervent girlhood love for a passionate revolutionary named Vasily.

After a perilous escape, Sofia endures months of desolation and hardship. But, clinging to a promise she made to Anna, she subsists on the belief that someday she will track down Vasily. In a remote village, she's nursed back to health by a Gypsy family, and there she finds more than refuge--she also finds Mikhail Pashin, who, her heart tells her, is Vasily in disguise. He's everything she has ever wanted--but he belongs to Anna.

After coming this far, Sofia is tantalizingly close to freedom, family--even a future. All that stands in her way is the secret past that could endanger everything she has come to hold dear!