My Russian (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

Now Francesca is supposedly in Greece with a tour group, but she is actually living in disguise just blocks from where her husband, Ren, and her teenage son await her return. Ren, a lawyer, is recovering from a gunshot wound inflicted some months earlier by a mysterious intruder. Francesca moves unnoticed through the town she calls home, seeing it with the seizing eyes of a traveler. Her memories have a similar hyperclarity. She tells a series of stories that traverse the past four decades, beginning with her childhood in a prairie town ringed by underground missiles aimed at Russia. Her voice is searching, specific, unsparing, and sometimes darkly funny. In the process of listening, we learn who shot her husband, a modest mystery that rests on a larger one: for a woman like Francesca Woodbridge, what makes a fully lived, fully conscious life?… (more)