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1921: A group of Bolsheviks have taken over Irina and Lili Goliteva’s ancestral home in Moscow
1921: A group of Bolsheviks have taken over Irina and Lili Goliteva’s ancestral home in Moscow
It is the summer of 1921, and a group of Bolsheviks have taken over Irina and Lili Goliteva’s ancestral home in Moscow, a stately mansion falling into disrepair and decay. The remaining members of their family are ordered to move into the cramped attic, while the officials take over an entire wing of grand rooms downstairs. The sisters understand it is the way of things and know they must forget their noble upbringing to make their way in this new Soviet Russia. But the house begins to whisper of a traumatic past not as dead as they thought.
Eager to escape it and their unwelcome new landlords, Irina and Lili find jobs with the recently arrived American Relief Administration, meant to ease the post-revolutionary famine in Russia. For the sisters, the ARA provides much-needed food and employment, as well as a chance for sensible Irina to help those less fortunate and artistic Lili to express herself for a good cause. It might just lead them to love, too.
But at home, the spirits of their deceased family awaken, desperate to impart what really happened to them during the Revolution. Soon one of the officials living in the house is found dead. Was his death caused by something supernatural, or by someone all too human? And are Irina and Lili and their family next? Only unearthing the frightening secrets of Moscow House will reveal all. But this means the sisters must dig deep into a past no one in Russia except the dead are allowed to remember.
Moscow
“To the new Soviet republic, the Bolsheviks, and the Cheka secret police, they are still countesses Irina and Liliya Goliteva, the people’s class enemy as descendants of one of the greatest and most ancient aristocratic clans of an imperial Russia dead and buried. Like most of their family. But unlike many former people, Irina’s family didn’t flee Russia. They stayed in hope of a return to normalcy. Now it is too late. Even if they could obtain papers, how could a household of women and children brave the danger of travel and exile?
The background:
“In fairy tales, paupers became princesses, not the other way around. But Soviet Russia is a warped Wonderland, where all is topsy-turvy and not what it should be.”
The author says:
So much of the novel is inspired by some of my favorite gothic stories, particularly by the Russian/Slavic gothic genre and the Ukrainian author who arguably founded it—Nikolai Gogol.
There are many real people and places in the novel – such as the American Relief Administration (ARA). The ARA provided food and medicine during the 1921-1923 famine in Soviet Russia, and were the first outside eyewitnesses to Russian Bolshevism
Destination/location: Moscow Author/guide: Olesya Salnikova Gilmore Departure Time: 1921
Back to ResultsFuture: An ancient power is returning . . . and is hungry for revenge.
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