Awakenings

For an American journalist, for a Soviet Army major, and for a world entranced by nuclear power, it is a time of... awakenings.

Ellen Westover has found her next big newspaper story -- the lives of ordinary people who work at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Soviet Union. But on her last day in Kiev, she is arrested as a possible spy or saboteur. Major Aleksandr Chesnokov, a cynical career army man more fond of vodka than people, is assigned to drive her to K.G.B. headquarters in Moscow just as Chernobyl explodes.

On their trip through the Russian countryside, against this epic backdrop, both people find that their carefully-crafted shells are beginning to crack.

For both are discovering love for the first time. It is a love that will follow Ellen back to New York and will follow Aleksandr for the rest of his days.

Here is a story that will haunt you far beyond its final page. Olive Evans, a veteran New York Times journalist, gives us more than just a smart newspaperwoman hungry for both foreign adventure and her beloved New York. Page after page, in subtle and elegant prose, this is a novel that unwraps and reveals the surprises of the human heart.