‘Wonderful . . . a vivid and endearing pictures of family life’ The Times
‘Heartbreaking and heartwarming in equal measure, this is an esquisite, compelling study of survival and emotional resilience’ Daily Mail
September 1939. The Soviets advance into Poland. Young officer’s wife Lena has one chance to flee the country with her daughter. Instead she chooses to return to her childhood home. When the Russian army reach their village, Lena and her family are denounced as enemies of the state and exiled to the freezing hell of Siberia.
Amid the hunger and back-breaking work in deep snow, she discovers something remarkable: even while you’re fighting to survive, it is possible to fall in love. What she can’t imagine are the consequences of love. And the choice that must be made.