2010 book 178

Daphne Kalotay's Russian Winter
I feel fairly certain that this book is going to be a sleeper bestseller--I'm not sure if it's the whole Russian ballerina thing or what, but people are going to love this. So yes, it's about an elderly woman who was once a famous Russian ballerina (who defected in 1952), and is now donating her jewelry collection for an auction to raise money for the Boston Ballet. The story flashes back and forth between her painful present and her youthful past. Also critical to the plot is a professor of Russian who hopes to talk to the ballerina about his own past, as well as a young woman working on the catalog for the auction house, who begin to work together to puzzle together the mysteries behind a certain amber necklace. The end is part heartbreaking and part sweet (though perhaps a bit unbelievable), but I thoroughly enjoyed this. A/A-.