From the salons of pre-revolutionary Russia to war-torn Britain and the tropics of Northern Australia, a stunning debut novel about three generations of exiles. A house carved as fine as a jewellery box, a painted garden, an angel in a palm tree. These are only some of the marvels of the Russian estate on which Nina Karsavina grows up, surrounded by her beautiful mother, her eccentric father, Katya her elder sister and the housekeeper Darya who teaches her the old Russian folktales and traditions. But when her father gradually loses his mind after the death of her mother, Nina takes the difficult decision to leave her homeland behind and to marry a complete stranger. Over the next eighty years, the family will scatter across the globe in the wake of the Russian revolution and two world wars. It is only when Nina’s granddaughter Julia, an artist, begins a search for her roots that the family’s tragic history can be pieced together for the first time.