tatiana is eighteen years old pregnant and widowed when she escapes wartorn leningrad to find a new life in america but the ghosts of her past do not rest easily she becomes consumed by the belief that her husband red army officer alexander belov is still alive and needs her desperatelymeanwhile oceans and continents away in the soviet union alexander barely escapes execution and is forced to lead a battalion of soldiers considered expendable by the soviet high command yet alexander is determined to take his men through the ruins of europe in one last desperate bid to escape stalins death machine and somehow find his way to tatiana once again