From the author of the bestselling Daughters of the Occupation comes a novel based on real-life Russian female aviators and their history-making regiment whose night bombing missions helped defeat the invading German army during World War II.
Marina Raskova, a divorced mother, is known as the “Soviet Amelia Earhart” for her long-distance world records as a flight navigator. In 1941, when the Germans attack her beloved motherland, extending their second front in the East, Marina leaves her position as a flight instructor, determined to create three female aviation regiments within the Red Army Air Force.
In Moscow, Lina Gelman, a third-year Jewish university student, helps dig a trench around the city to impede the advancing Germans. Though she will defend her country in any way, Lina has always wanted to fly—a dream she believed was dead after a disastrous first lesson.
Seventeen-year-old Nadia Popova, an aspiring singer, actress, and pilot, took flying lessons without her parents’ knowledge. When she learns of Marina’s new squadron, she sneaks away from home to enlist.
Orphaned during the Russian Civil War, Dunka Bershanskaya, a flight instructor, has no desire to join the fight. But after hearing Marina on the radio asking women to volunteer for her all-female combat aviation regiment, Dunka changes her mind.
The lives of these women become intertwined when they begin combat flight training under the supervision of Marina Raskova. But tragedy strikes before they enter the fray, jeopardizing the entire regiment.
A triumphant story of unexpected heroes, The Night Witches explores what happens when a group of women choose to defy astonishing odds—and survive.