This stunning debut novel set in the fascinating world of Cold War Soviet ballet follows the fates of twin sisters whose bond is competitive, complicated, but never broken. Maya and Natasha are twin sisters born in the midst of the Siege of Leningrad in 1941 and immediately abandoned by their mother, a prima ballerina at the Kirov Ballet who would rather die than not dance. Taken in by their mother’s best friend at the Kirov, the girls are raised to be dancers themselves. The Vaganova Ballet Academy—and the totalitarian Soviet regime—is the only world they know.

In 1958, now seniors at the Vaganova at the height of the Cold War, all Maya and Natasha and their classmates want is to dance with the Kirov, and to join the company on its tour to America next year. But a new law from the Kremlin upends Maya and Natasha’s lives: due to fears of defection, family members may no longer travel abroad together. The Kirov can only accept one of them. Maya, long accustomed to living in her sister’s shadow, accepts her bitter fate, until a new dance partner inspires her to dream bigger and practice harder. For the first time—and at the cruelest possible moment—the sisters are equally matched. And then one sister betrays the other, altering their lives forever and splitting them in two, though neither will stray far from the other’s orbit. One twin pursues her ballet career and experiences a world outside Russia for the first time, the other is cast in an epic film adaptation of War and Peace, produced and financed by the Soviet State, while all around them the Cold War is heating up.

Maya and Natasha are immersed in ballet from birth, and Elyse Durham masterfully captures the grueling reality of practice rooms and rehearsals, and the ephemeral beauty of dance. But challenges arise and escalate like a crescendo through the dancers' bodies, and the twins must confront their loyalties: to East versus West; to the government that saved them versus their dreams of freedom; and, always, to each other.