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The Light of Seven Days: A Novel Audiobook
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Living with her Babby after her parents’ death, ten-year-old Dinah Ash is invited to train at Leningrad’s legendary Vaganova Ballet School. In the world of elite dance, she works hard, falls in love, and weathers the Soviet Union’s ubiquitous antisemitism, but despite an impressive talent, she quickly learns that dancers of her “profile” don’t make prima ballerinas.
Love of Leningrad, ballet, friends, family, and books sustain Dinah until history intervenes. The Soviet war in Afghanistan, the rise of perestroika, and a re-emergence of Nazism leave her vulnerable and exposed. Realizing escape is her only option, she applies for refugee status in America.
Dinah’s adjustment to life in the US is a test as much of her identity as of her perseverance. Is who she is something Dinah can forge on her own? Or is identity imposed by upbringing, public opinion, and the myths of our cultures? As Dinah struggles with the questions of religion, race, and worth, her choices and the people she encounters will determine whether the dream of a better life can survive the weight of the past.
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“Adams’ lyrical prose paints a lush, vivid, and imagistic portrait of the world through Dinah’s eyes…A quiet, artfully rendered story of the beauty and difficulty of coming-of-age between cultures, in the shadow of history.”
— Kirkus Reviews
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“Adams’ novel reminds us that the eyes of the immigrant and the artist alike can make the familiar seem strange and the strange familiar.”
— Kevin Birmingham, New York Times bestselling author -
“[A] bracing debut…Adams’s affecting insight into their adopted home and the Russia they left—Adams emigrated from the old Soviet Union, too—is well worth the troika ride.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“Adams’s affecting insight into their adopted home and the Russia they left is well worth the troika ride…[A] bracing debut.”
— Publishers Weekly
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About River Adams
Growing up a concert pianist in Soviet Russia, River Adams (they/them) came to America as a Jewish refugee during the collapse of the USSR and began their life from scratch in their adopted homeland. Today, River lives in Massachusetts, writing and taking care of a big, noisy family of six humans, two dogs, and a demon disguised as a cat. They are the author of many published short stories, essays, and a biography of Leonard Swidler.