The story is an imaginative and spirited narrative embracing both diversity and universality. Set in small-town America (199 ), the novel's main characters, six Russian newcomers, provide a fresh perspective on a close-knit college community. Two couples, one child, and a single woman make up the core group. The story follows them and offers to the reader the unique opportunity to explore not only the surface differences between Russian and American lifestyles, but the more profound similarities. Uncertainty, infidelity, and betrayal plague both the immigrants and their fellow townsfolk, but such universal redeemers as love, family, and friendship are the fundamental ties that bind. Narrowed to a specific fourteen-month time frame, but enhanced with flashbacks and epilogue, the novel shows everyday life in both countries. Jealousies, lusts, and misdemeanors (and even organized crime ) have their place, as do finer passions for truth, learning, love, and simple neighborliness. The novel is, by turns, tragic and heart-warming, passionate and instructive, but always, and ultimately, hope-filled.