Alla Crone – författare

Jim Braddock, a successful surgeon practicing in San Francisco is married to Gretchenwhom he met in Germany. It is 1982 and everything seems to be going smoothlyin his life. Their son, Steve, is in his senior year of high school and is aiming to followin his fathers footsteps. His wife is interested in metaphysics, claims she believes inreincarnation, and studies theosophy. Jim looks askance on her preoccupation anddismisses it as a fad.Unexpectedly, he suffers a serious heart attack, is rushed to the hospital and whilehis colleagues frantically work to save him, he is thrust into a near death experience.In it, he meets his long dead professor who shows him several episodes from two ofJims previous lives, one in 1715 France and the other in 1881 Russia. He meets thewoman he loves in both incarnations and through a series of dramatic events learnsthat his behavior has caused inevitable consequences in each of his succeeding lives.He recovers a wiser and better man and takes his wife on a second honeymoon,humbly grateful for being given another chance at life.Tragedy strikes unexpectedly and leaves the family shattered. But after several years,his son, who is now a physician himself, married, and is expecting a child, hears hisfathers story and is stunned by what he learns. A strange event occurs, and thedrama unfolds to a remarkable conclusion.

The Japanese Occupation of Manchuria in the 1930s wrenched Nina from a life of luxury to poverty. Born in Harbin, a culturally Russian city peopled by stateless White Russians who had fled the Bolsheviks, she grew up under the threat of the Occupation and the yoke of dysfunctional familys emotional and physical abuse. Stripped of their wealth, her family fled to Shanghai where she suffered hunger, life in a crowded rooming house, and the ever-threatening results of Japanese domination food shortages, cruelty, and fear.After the war ended, and the American Armed Forces entered Shanghai, her life was transformed when the hope she nurtured but never dared to voice came true the American dream.The Japanese Occupation of Manchuria in the 1930s wrenched Nina from a life of luxury to poverty. Born in Harbin, a culturally Russian city peopled by stateless White Russians who had fled the Bolsheviks, she grew up under the threat of the Occupation and the yoke of dysfunctional familys emotional and physical abuse. Stripped of their wealth, her family fled to Shanghai where she suffered hunger, life in a crowded rooming house, and the ever-threatening results of Japanese domination food shortages, cruelty, and fear.After the war ended, and the American Armed Forces entered Shanghai, her life was transformed when the hope she nurtured but never dared to voice came true the American dream.

Set in China, the United States,. Germany, and USSR, this is the powerful story of Vickie, a woman of indomitable will, who is yearning above all for a life of freedom and security and who must endure an autocratic mother, an alcoholic sister, a faithless, weak husband, and a fatally flawed lover.

Driven by an overwhelming wish to survive, Vickie lives through the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, the death of her best friend the Jewess Sara in a refugee camp in the Philippines, and a wrenching choice between following her deluded French communist lover to the Soviet Union and marrying an American officer. She makes her choice and moves to San Francisco where she must adjust to a new way of life.

In Heidelberg, where her husband Brian has been transferred, she runs into the Frenchman again, has an affair with him and bears his child, but through it all steadfastly refuses to follow him to the Soviet Union she hates.

When tragedy strikes and Vickie is tormented by the discovery of a hidden family shame, this remarkable Russian woman is still able to find happiness and security in the United States.