A mysterious jewel holds the key to a life-changing secret, in this breathtaking tale of love and art, betrayal and redemption.

When she decides to auction her remarkable jewelry collection, Nina Revskaya, once a great star of the Bolshoi Ballet, believes she has finally drawn a curtain on her past. Instead, the former ballerina finds herself overwhelmed by memories of her homeland and of the events both glorious and heartbreaking that changed the course of her life half a century before.

Interweaving past and present, Moscow and New England, the backstage tumult of theatre life and the transformative power of art, Daphne Kalotay’s luminous first novel- a literary page-turner of the highest order- captures the uncertainty and terror of lives powerless to withstand the forces of history, while affirming that even in times of great strife, the human spirit reaches for beauty and grace, forgiveness and transcendence.

About the Author: The author of Calamity and Other Stories, winner of the 2005 Story Prize, Daphne Kolatay has been a fellow of the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, Yaddo, and the MacDowell Colony, as well as a recipient of Vassar College’s Rose Fellowship in the Creative Arts.