Surgei Galipova, a Russian immigrant and a rancher in the Cariboo region of British Columbia, owes his life to the Countess Catherine Stanislavovna Federov. When the Countess asks Surgei to send his eighteen-year-old daughter, Alice, to help her in a private hospital she is establishing in St. Petersburg, Alice adamantly refuses. But when her father threatens to disown her, she reluctantly agrees to help the Countess for six months. That same summer, in 1914, eleven-year-old Natalya Tcychowski, the youngest daughter of a Hutsul family in the Carpathian Mountains, is coping with a crisis of her own. Having run afoul of the local bailiff, her eighteen-year-old brother, Oleksi, is forced to flee from their home village of Zgardy, which is under the control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When he arrives in St. Petersburg, Oleksi seeks the help of the Countess Federov, who owes his father a debt of gratitude for saving her lifetwenty-two years earlier.

The outbreak of war in 1914 puts both Natalya's and Alice's lives on a path they could not have foreseen and cannot avoid. Three years later Alice is still trapped in Russia and her position as a Canadian in Petrograd is becoming increasingly perilous. Natalya's family is torn apart by their loyalty to the Tsar and countess. As Russia is sent into upheaval by the revolutions of 1917, both Natalya and Alice fight for their lives in a country that is rapidly unraveling.