Colorado Parks & Wildlife Research Library

In 1934, thirteen-year-old Marya and her younger brother, Georgi, set out alone on a long and arduous journey into Siberia to find their mother after she and their father are exiled for opposing Stalin.

Leningrad, 1952. Andrei, a young doctor, and Ana, a nursery school teacher, know their happiness is precarious. When Andrei treats the child of a senior secret police officer, it becomes painfully clear that his own fate, and that of his family, is bound to the child's.

Behind the walls of Saint Petersburg's famous theater, Esmeralda has won the lead role in the Russian Mouse Ballet Company's new ballet, to be staged at Christmastime alongside the human performance. But when Esmeralda learns that The Nutcracker features mice as villains, she worries that the city's ballet-loving mice won't come to see it. Will her first appearance onstage be her last?

It is 1982 and nineteen-year-old Laura Reid is spending a semester in Leningrad studying Russian, but when she meets Alyosha she discovers the dissident Russia--a world of wild parties, underground books and music, love, and constant danger.

A middle grade adventure told through diary entries, maps, and photos depicts the harrowing journey of two siblings who become separated when the Nazis declare war on the Soviet Union and their city evacuates its children on trains meant to carry them to safety.