Simons, Paullina

Believing Alexander to be dead, eighteen-year-old and pregnant Tatiana escapes Leningrad to America but soon comes to believe that her husband, Red Army officer Alexander Belov, is still alive so she goes to Germany to find him. Alexander, in the Soviet Union, is forced to lead troops through Europe where he is imprisoned. Alexander tries desperately to stay alive long enough to escape and find Tatiana.

When Shelby and her friend Gina take a summer road trip after high school graduation in 1981, they're goals include getting to California to reunite with Shelby's mother who left her years before, finding Gina's wayward boyfriend, and returning home in time to start college in the fall. But their plans get derailed when the girls pick up a hitchhiker who calls herself Candy Cane. Now their only goal is to survive.

Tatiana and Alexander have miraculously found one another in America after both of them fled their native Russia following World War II. Now they have a son, Anthony, and their love seems boundless; but the trials of the Cold War, in its infancy still, threaten to take away the peace that was already so fragile.

Tatiana and Dasha Metanova are living in Leningrad during 1941 when Hitler's army invades the country. The sisters befriend Alexander, an officer in the Red Army who falls in love with Tatiana.