The Last Russian Doll

BERKLEYAn imprint of Penguin Random House LLCpenguinrandomhouse.comCopyright © 2023 by Kristen LoeschPenguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.BERKLEY and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataNames: Loesch, Kristen, author.Title: The last Russian doll / Kristen Loesch.Description: New York : Berkley, [2023]Identifiers: LCCN 2022026264 (print) | LCCN 2022026265 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593547984 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593548004 (ebook)Subjects: LCGFT: Historical fiction. | Novels.Classification: LCC PS3612.O365 L37 2023 (print) | LCC PS3612.O365 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6--dc23/eng/20220702LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022026264LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022026265Cover design by Will StaehleCover images: woman © Richard Jenkins Photography; Moscow by mikolajn / Getty ImagesBook design by Laura K. Corless, adapted for ebook by Kelly BrennanThis is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.pid_prh_6.0_142841689_c0_r1 ContentsCoverTitle PageCopyrightDedicationEpigraphProloguePart IChapter 1The Snow Was Porcelain and the Rain Was GlassChapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4The Wedding VeilChapter 5Chapter 6Chapter 7The White GloveChapter 8Chapter 9Chapter 10The Great and Terrible MonsterChapter 11Chapter 12Chapter 13The Silver QueenChapter 14Chapter 15Chapter 16Part IIThe New KingChapter 17Chapter 18Chapter 19Chapter 20Chapter 21Part IIIThe Boy and the WavesChapter 22Chapter 23Chapter 24A House on a Wide RiverChapter 25Chapter 26Chapter 27Part IVChapter 28Chapter 29Chapter 30Chapter 31Chapter 32Chapter 33Chapter 34Chapter 35Chapter 36Author’s NoteAcknowledgmentsAbout the Author For my family So few roads I traveledSo many mistakes I made—SERGEY YESENIN Prologue In some faraway kingdom, in some long-ago land, there lived a young girl who looked just like her porcelain doll. The same rusty-gold hair. The same dark-wine eyes. The girl’s own mother could hardly tell them apart. But they were never apart, for the girl always held the doll at her side, to keep it from the clutches of her many, many siblings.The family lived in a dusky-pink house by the river, and in the evenings, the children liked to gather around the old stove and listen to their mother tell stories. Stories of kingdoms even farther away and lands even longer ago, when there had been kings and queens living in castles, stories of how those castles had been swept away into the midnight-black sea. The many, many siblings would drift away to sleep on these stories, and then the mother would take the girl and the doll into her lap and tell tales of the girl’s father. He’d had the same rusty-gold hair, the same dark-wine eyes, in some other faraway kingdom, PARTI 1 RosieLONDON, JUNE 1991The man I’ve come to see is nearly a century old. White haired and lean, with just a dash of his youthful film-star looks remaining, he sits alone onstage, drumming his fingers on his knees. His head is tilted back as he takes a hard look at the crowd, at the latecomers standing awkwardly in the aisles, their smiles sheepish. At the young couple who have brought their children, a toddler girl swinging her legs back and forth, and the older one, a boy, solemn faced and motionless. At me.Usually when two strangers make eye contact across a crowded room, one or both will look away, but neither of us do.Alexey Ivanov will be reading tonight from his memoir, the slim red-jacketed book sitting on a table next to his chair. I’ve read it so many times by now that I could mouth it along with him: A hillside falls out of view, and voices, too, fall away. . . . We are like castaways, adrift on a single piece of