Mother of Peter the Great.: A Novel of the Woman Who Saved Her Son and Gave Birth to an Empire.

She ran barefoot through a Ryazan village-and became Tsaritsa of All Russia.

She married a Tsar she had seen twice-and bore a son who changed the world.

Her enemies called her "the bast-shoe girl." She called herself mother of Peter the Great.

Moscow, 1669. The Tsaritsa is dead. The Kremlin is a nest of vipers. And in a remote village, thirteen-year-old Natashka Naryshkina laughs with servant girls, carrying mushrooms, knowing nothing of the political storm about to swallow her.

She will ...