Red winter: one woman`s struggle to surv, Kyra Kaptzan Robinov, Robinov

Lubas husband, Ilya, a prominent newspaper editor and lawyer, is among those jailed and tortured. Overnight, her comfortable, upper class life is upended and Luba finds herself on the run with four small children and a mother-in-law.

Pigsties...abandoned warehouses...opium dens--these are just a few of the places Luba is forced to seek refuge as she tries to elude capture and stay alive. Will her former servants, a Chinese cook and a Russian coachman, help or turn on her?

The little-known history of this exotic time and place is seen through the eyes of a reluctant heroine grappling with adversity and loss during the dangerous political chaos following the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II.

Kyra Kaptzan Robinov has woven her familys history into a fictional narrative. Having grown up hearing her father and grandmother tell of that winter, she felt compelled to capture it in writing. Though their accounts contained villains and executions, peril and pain, they always seemed more like escapades than reality. When Kyra started to research the actual historical events, the gruesome details she uncovered were in such contrast to the quaint tales shed heard in her childhood that she didnt know how to reconcile the discrepancy. Had her father misremembered? Had her grandmother blotted out the horrors of her past? How could she ever weave together the conflicting information?