Author: Debra Dean

An exquisitely imagined inner portrait of an aging American woman whose early Alzheimer’s brings back in vivid detail the years she spent appreciating the beauty and struggling to preserve the treasures of St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum from the Nazis, a time when she was also starving and terrorized by the city’s blockade. Because all this has become more real to her than her present “reality,” should she be considered deprived or blessed?  After you have finished this beautiful first novel, you may be surprised by your answer. Another in a growing series of stories about this much misunderstood condition. Cf. the film. Away from Her which was adapted from Alice Munro’s short story, The Bear Came over the Mountain.