"Words fail me as I try to describe this distinctly powerful book. Page by page, translating every word of her mother's journals, the author learns of the horrors and joys of her life, and we join her on that long road. Birth as the Russian revolution was just starting, a childhood under Stalin, terror, starvation, escape west through Ukraine into Germany during World War II, a final transition into America, and the raising of her own four children. The story is told from the present, with deep dives into the past, interweaving different worlds, documenting a life of exile, and an inability to let go of the magic of an imaginary Russia. The experience is so personalized that you feel as if you are living through it with her. You will not be able to put it down!"-Tania Romanov, author of One Hundred Years of Exile: A Romanov's Search for Her Father's Russia