Mothers and daughters share a particularly close relationship, yet there is also a unique tension between them. This was no different for the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva and her daughter Ariadna, born in 1912. The revolution forces their family into exile, and it is not until the late 1930s that they return to Moscow: the daughter as a fervent revolutionary, the mother consumed by an insurmountable hatred for Stalin's regime. Riikka Pelo's novel tells a story of life between hope, insight, and resistance. In a weightlessly light tone, yet always strikingly realistic, it creates an intensely vivid double portrait of mother and daughter—encompassing a factually accurate depiction of the poet obsessed with her work under extreme political conditions: surveillance and betrayal are omnipresent. Yet, there are also the highest personal expectations and overflowing emotions.