Description

Can a woman truly understand herself if she doesn’t fully know her mother?

From Kristin Hannah, bestselling author of acclaimed novels Firefly Lane and True Colors, comes a poignant and emotionally charged story that explores the deep bonds between mothers and daughters, and the powerful connections that tie past to present.

Sisters Meredith and Nina Whitson couldn’t be more different. Meredith chose family life, staying close to home to raise her children and manage the family’s apple orchard, while Nina courageously pursued her dreams around the globe as a renowned photojournalist. When their father falls critically ill, the sisters are reunited, forced to stand side by side with their distant and emotionally reserved mother, Anya, who remains unable to give comfort or warmth—just as she has always been.

From childhood, their only real bond with Anya came through a mysterious Russian fairy tale she occasionally shared. Now, on his deathbed, their father insists on one last telling of this fairy tale, this time in its entirety.

This simple request launches Meredith and Nina on a transformative journey that plunges them deeply into the realities of Anya’s past in war-devastated Leningrad more than fifty years earlier. Moving freely between past and present, the sisters uncover a heartbreaking, untold truth about their mother’s life—a secret so troubling and tragic, it threatens everything the family has known and forever changes the way the sisters view themselves.