The Red Daughter - Readings

Description

Running from her father's brutal legacy, Joseph Stalin's daughter defects to the United States against the turbulence of the 1960s. This sweeping historical novel is inspired by the true story of Svetlana Alliluyeva. In one of the most momentous events of the Cold War, Svetlana Allilyueva, the forty-one-year-old daughter of the notorious tyrannical leader of the USSR, abruptly abandoned her life in Moscow in 1967, arriving in New York to throngs of reporters and a nation hungry to hear her story. By her side is Peter Horvath, a lawyer in his mid-thirties who is sent by the CIA to escort Svetlana to America. Rootless, lonely, and bewildered by her adopted country's radically different society, Svetlana takes refuge in Arizona with the widow of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, makes a hasty marriage, and has a child. Floundering, she reaches out to Peter, her first connection in America and, it seems, the only person she can genuinely count on. When their relationship becomes more than just professional, it unfolds under the eyes of her CIA minders, and Svetlana and Peter's private lives are no longer their own. The author's father was in fact the young lawyer who escorted the real Svetlana to the United States. Based on his father's reminiscences as well as his own extensive research into Svetlana's life, John Burnham Schwartz recreates this dramatic story of a woman's search for a new life and a place to belong, in the evocative and imaginative prose that have made him a critically acclaimed, bestselling author of literary and historical fiction.

About the Author

John Burnham Schwartz is the bestselling author of five novels, including Northwest Corner, The Commoner, and Reservation Road, which was made into a film based on his screenplay. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and he has done extensive screen and television writing for the major Hollywood studios, including as screenwriter of HBO Films The Wizard of Lies starring Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer, for which he was nominated for a 2018 Writers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Writing. Literary Director of the Sun Valley Writers Conference, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife, writer Aleksandra Crapanzano, and their son Garrick.