Sashenka

Epic and romantic were some of the descriptors that attracted me to Simon Montefiore's Sashenka. And the book did not disappoint. The story begins in 1916 as the Russian revolution is about to erupt. Sashenka is a young, beautiful, wealthy teenager who rejects her bourgeois upbringing and becomes a Bolshevik activist with the code name "Comrade Snowfox."

Cut to 1939, and she is married to a party leader -- both of them "completely committed to the rapture of the Revolution" -- raising two kids whom she adores. Although Stalin's reign of terror is over, even the smallest infraction can lead to imprisonment or even execution. Thus, when Sashenka embarks on a torrid affair with a writer who is anything but a party loyalist, and her husband suspects the affair and tapes one of their clandestine meetings, the couple's comfortable life comes apart at the seams. With the help of their friend Comrade Hercules, she and her husband manage to spirit her children away just before they are arrested, and she endures torture (vividly and horribly depicted by the historian Montefiore) without breaking just long enough to ensure that the children are safe.

The third part of the book takes place in 1994. A young historian, Katinka Kinsky, is selected to research the family history of a Russian woman who says she was adopted during the revolution. You can imagine what Katinka learns, but there are still some surprises, and more romance, in store.