A Train To Moscow

tags: historical fiction, Russia

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

from GoodReads

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.

It's been a while since Amazon offered a worthy First Reads book. A Train To Moscow is one of  2 free First Reads book for March 2022 I downloaded. I hope there will be more quality books in the future.

The novel starts when Sasha was just 6 or 7 years old and ends when she's in her 30s. The precocious girl is strong-willed and defies her mother and grandparents. She sets her mind in becoming an actress after hearing on the radio Anton Chekov's play Three Sisters because she wants to be a thousand characters instead of living as Sasha. I like the author's writing style, the vivid descriptions of Russia and its caste system during that time, and the story. This is the author's first fiction book.

Highly recommended.