The Nesting Dolls is a family saga, made deep by historical detail and wide by the sweep of time. Its tangible symbol is a little set of matryoskas, the lacquered nesting dolls given to Olena Petrova by her own mother in 1917, near the bloody end of the Bolshevik revolution. From the busy streets of occupied Shanghai, to the pastoral American postwar South, despite miles of ocean and the barriers of class and culture, four generations of women struggle to repeat that simple transfer. A hauntingly intimate portrait of four mothers- each confronting the loss of life's most precious treasure-The Nesting Dolls is a story for those who believe in improbable legacies. It's a story for those who know that family ties can never really be severed. That all of us, whether we know it or not, live our lives encased and surrounded by those who came before.