Аннотация

A saga of love and courage as Irina Shvetsova of Russia marries Woodford McClellan, an American professor. For eleven years they were separated as both fought the politics and bureaucracy that kept them apart until January 1986 when the McClellans became a family again. Recounts the author's frustration in being denied exit from Russia with her American husband, the dangerous political activism she undertook, and their hard-won reunion and new life in the United States.
Poignantly relating the romance between a Russian translator (the author) and an American professor of Russian history (her husband and translator of this memoir), their marriage in the Soviet Union in 1974 and reunion in the U.S. after an 11-year separation, McClellan chronicles bouts of conjugal happiness, renewed and dashed hopes and the KGB's persecution and surveillance--which, she writes, helped revive a relationship deteriorating from years of forced estrangement. She recounts that she and her mother, a KGB employee, lost their jobs, while her friends were harassed and her daughter, shunned at school, developed ulcers. McClellan also provides insights into the often wretched conditions of Soviet housing, work, schools and hospitals. The author has settled in Virginia, where her husband teaches.
McClellan has quite a story to tell. With warmth, humor, anger, and tenderness, she relates her 11-year struggle to join her American husband in the United States. For reasons that were a mystery to her, the KGB persistently denied her emigration. Yet rather than humbly submit to her fate, Irina fought back against her formidable adversary, conquering her fear and ultimately winning her cause. Her weapons were so few, the obstacles enormous, including her own mother, who was employed by the KGB. Once in America, she and her husband, by now virtual strangers, had to get to know each other all over again. A strong Russian woman Irina also had to cope with the overwhelming abundance and friendly curiosity of her new country. A story of the triumph of the human spirit over adversity.