About this item
Running from her father's brutal legacy, Joseph Stalin's daughter defects to the United States against the turbulence of the 1960s: The Red Daughter is a sweeping historical novel and unexpected love story inspired by the remarkable life of Svetlana Alliluyeva.In one of the most momentous events of the Cold War, Svetlana Alliluyeva, the only daughter of the infamous Soviet despot, abruptly abandoned her life in Moscow in 1967, arriving in New York to throngs of reporters and a nation hungry to hear her story. By her side is Peter Horvath, a young lawyer sent by the CIA to smuggle Svetlana into America. She is a contradictory celebrity: charismatic and headstrong, lonely and haunted, excited and alienated by her adopted country's radically different society. Convincing herself that all she yearns for is a "simple American life," she attempts to settle into suburban existence in Princeton, New Jersey. But one day an invitation from the widow of architect Frank Lloyd Wright arrives, and Svetlana impulsively joins her cultlike community at Taliesin. When this dream ultimately ends in disillusionment, she reaches out to Peter, the one person who understands how the chains of her past still hold her prisoner. As their relationship changes and deepens, it unfolds under the eyes of her CIA minders, and Svetlana and Peter's private lives are no longer their own. John Burnham Schwartz's father was in fact the young lawyer who escorted the real Svetlana to the United States. Drawing upon private papers and years of extensive research, Schwartz imaginatively recreates the story of an extraordinary, troubled woman's search for a new life and a place to belong, in the powerful, evocative prose that has made him a critically acclaimed author of literary and historical fiction.
About the Author
JOHN BURNHAM SCHWARTZ is the bestselling author of five novels, including Northwest Corner, The Commoner, and Reservation Road, which was made into a film based on his screenplay. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and he has done extensive screen and television writing for the major Hollywood studios, including as screenwriter of HBO Films' The Wizard of Lies starring Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer, for which he was nominated for a 2018 Writers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Writing. Literary Director of the Sun Valley Writers' Conference, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife, writer Aleksandra Crapanzano, and their son Garrick.
