This is a story of two families at the center of Communism's soul-wrecking lies -- one family among the wreckers and one among the wrecked. The wreckers are characters from the history books. They include Zoya Zarubina, who translated the stolen American atomic bomb secrets, and her stepfather, Leonid Eitingon, who directed Trotsky's murder in Mexico. The wrecked, the Anokhins, stand for the experiences of millions -- the Gulag, starvation, exile, blackmail, and murder. Trotsky, Stalin, Beria, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Daniel Siqueiros, Isaac Babel, Andrei Sakharov, and Anna Akhmatova are all characters in this story.