A bright but naive young woman marries an egotistical man of letters. The war separates them, and Alaine spends months in turmoil, first imprisoned by the Germans, then a victim of the Russians. Her husband is presumed dead, but she presses on in this autobiographical novel about men s violence against women. And yet there s beauty in these pages, and words of hope amid the worst suffering. "Una mujer en el frente" was first published in 1991, in the midst of Russia s political transition, and broke the decades-long silence about the wartime injustices suffered by hundreds of thousands of women at the hands of Russian soldiers."