A Train to Moscow

In post-World War II Russia, a girl must reconcile a tragic past with her hope for the future in this powerful and poignant novel about family secrets, passion and loss, perseverance and ambition.

In a small, provincial town behind the Iron Curtain, Sasha lives in a house full of secrets, one of which is her own dream of becoming an actress. When she leaves for Moscow to audition for drama school, she defies her mother and grandparents and abandons her first love, Andrei.

Before she leaves, Sasha discovers the hidden war journal of her uncle Kolya, an artist still missing in action years after the war has ended. His pages expose the official lies and the forbidden truth of Stalin's brutality. Kolya's revelations and his tragic love story guide Sasha through drama school and cement her determination to live a thousand lives onstage. After graduation, she begins acting in Leningrad, where Andrei, now a Communist Party apparatchik, becomes a censor of her work. As a past secret comes to light, Sasha's ambitions converge with Andrei's duties, and Sasha must decide if her dreams are truly worth the necessary sacrifice and if, as her grandmother likes to say, all will indeed be well.

Elena Gorokhova was born and raised in Leningrad, now Saint Petersburg, Russia. After graduating from Leningrad University, she moved to the United States, carrying one suitcase with twenty kilograms of what used to be her life. Elena is the author of two memoirs: A Mountain of Crumbs and Russian Tattoo. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Daily Beast, New Jersey Monthly, and the Daily Telegraph, as well as on NPR and BBC Radio and in a number of literary magazines. A Train to Moscow is Elena's first novel. She lives and teaches in New Jersey. For more information, visit www.elenagorokhova.com.