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From the bestselling author of A Mountain of Crumbs, a brilliant and illuminating BookPage portrait of mothers and daughters that reaches from Cold War Russia to modern-day New Jersey to show how the ties that hold you back can also teach you how to start over. Elena Gorokhova moves to the US in her twenties to join her American husband and to break away from her mother, a mirror image of her Soviet Motherland overbearing, protective, and difficult to leave. Before the birth of Elenas daughter, her mother comes to help care for the baby and stays for twenty-four years, ordering everyone to eat soup and wear a hat, just as she did in Leningrad. Russian Tattoo is the story of a unique balancing act and a family struggle three generations of strong women with very different cultural values, all living under the same roof and battling for control.