The Last Russian Doll

Loesch’s emotionally rich debut follows a woman seeking to uncover family secrets. In 1991 London, Rosie White, an Oxford postgrad, gets a position as a summer research assistant in Moscow. Before Rosie leaves, her mother gives her a key, once hidden in a porcelain doll, to open a drawer in the family’s Moscow home, which they fled from 14 years earlier after Rosie’s older sister and her father were murdered. In Moscow, Rosie finds a map in the drawer to a house called Otrada in Tula Province. In a parallel narrative set in 1917 Russia, early in the revolution, a young woman named Tonya marries wealthy factory owner Dmitry Lulikov, but becomes pregnant by a Bolshevik revolutionary. When Dmitry prevents Tonya from seeing her lover, she and her daughter return to her former home in Otrada. Loesch moves seamlessly between the expansive dual timelines, slowly establishing the connections between Rosie’s quest to solve the mystery of her family’s murders and Tonya’s efforts to survive the Bolshevik Revolution. Historical fiction fans will love this. Agent: Stephanie Abou, Massie McQuilkin Literary. (Mar.)