Russian Winter
Harper, 2010
Set in both modern-day Boston and post-WWII Moscow, Russian Winter tells the story of Bolshoi ballerina Nina Revskaya as she becomes a member of Stalin’s cultural elite before escaping to the West following a terrible betrayal. Decades later, she has decided to auction off her famed jewelry collection—including the rare set of amber that a Boston professor, Grigori Solodin, translator of the works of Revskaya’s late poet-husband, believes may hold the key to a long-kept secret. The literary mystery Grigori sets out to solve—with the help of Drew Brooks, a young associate at the Boston auction house—reaches much deeper: to the cost of making art and trying to live and love under circumstances of enormous repression.
A national and international bestseller, Russian Winter won the 2011 Writers’ League of Texas Fiction Award, was a finalist for the James Jones First Novel competition, and made it onto a Wall Street Journal “Five Best” list. Long-listed for the 2012 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, Russian Winter has been published in 23 foreign editions.