I picked this from the new books shelf after reading a glowing review in the NY Time Book Review last year. On the whole it lives up to the hype. It is a very vivid recreation of the life of an actual person, a daughter of the "mad monk" Valery Rasputin, murdered by his enemies in the chaos of the fall of Russia's czarist regime and the rise of Bolshevism, who is adopted by the royal family and lives for a time in the Catharine Palace (an incredibly lavish palace, built by the czars to outshine Versailles, magnificently restored after it was nearly destroyed by German forces who occupied it in World War II.) Eventually Nicolas and Alexandra are deported to Siberia, supposedly for their safety but in fact to await their execution, while Masha and her sister are released to find their own way. The story is complex, and told in language that is always engaging and sometimes quite entrancing. I won't recount it here, except to say that the seemingly implausible story of Masha becoming a circus performer, performing across Europe and the United States, is part of the factual skeleton on which Harrison builds her tale.
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