The Jewel of St. Petersburg
In this prequel to her debut novel, The Russian Concubine (2007), about White Russian Lydia Ivanova, Furnivall focuses on Lydia’s mother, Valentina, during the years leading up to and including the Russian Revolution of 1917. When Bolsheviks bomb her family’s country estate in 1910, crippling her younger sister, Katya, 17-year-old title character Valentina is left with guilt and resolve. With a slim frame but steely character, she defies both convention and her father, who is the czar’s minister of finance, first by training and working as a nurse and then by refusing to marry for money (in order to solve the family’s financial problems). Instead, she chooses the man she loves passionately, Dane Jens Friis, the czar’s engineer. Through the years, her hatred grows for Viktor Arkin, a Bolshevik leader once in the Ivanovas’ employ who develops an emotionally complicated relationship with the family. Furnivall portrays a country in dreadful conflict, with the grinding poverty of the masses fueling rebellion against the privileged classes. A must for readers of The Russian Concubine and Furnivall’s The Red Scarf (2008). --Michele Leber