In 1905 Jane Callaghan a once beautiful American writes to her son at a famous military academy. Her memories take us back twenty years to when she arrived in Russia to assist Douglas McCracken an obsessive engineer who needs the Grand Duke's patronage to sponsor his invention - a massive machine to harvest the forests of Siberia. In the course of her travels Jane meets two men who will change her life forever. A handsome young cadet Andrei Tolstoy with whom she shares her pas