It is January 1945, the last winter of the Second World War, and East Prussian civilians flee as the feared Red Army invades Germany in the wake of the impending Nazi defeat. Katya and her two sisters join thousands of others trudging to the Baltic Sea in the hope of escaping imprisonment.

But in a raid on a night-time hiding place, Katya is separated from her sisters and forced to take a long and shameful journey back into the Soviet Union, a country she fled as a child when her home was destroyed. Captured and imprisoned by the Russians, she is forced to endure hunger, back-breaking work and filthy conditions labouring in a mine deep in the Ural Mountains. But Crow Stone is also a story of friendship and the small acts of mercy that help Katya survive her ordeal. The novel is inspired by Gabriele Goldstone’s mother’s powerful memories of more than two years in a Soviet forced labour camp. A remarkably contemporary tale of invasion and the plight of refugees.