Granny Dan

To her family she was Granny Dan, an ordinary, eccentric old woman who emigrated from Russia and lived quietly in America. It is only after her death, sifting through the mementos she left behind — a bundle of letters, a pair of worn ballet shoes — that her granddaughter learns who she had been.

Placed in a ballet school as a child after her mother's death, Danina Petroskova grew up to become a prima ballerina of the Russian ballet and a favourite of the Tsar's court. A serious illness took her out of the theatre and into the care of Nikolai, the Tsar's own physician — a married man with children of his own — and left her caught between the life of the court and the stage she had given everything to reach.

Set in Russia at the turn of the century, Granny Dan is a short, quiet novel about the hidden life inside an ordinary one, and about a love that had to be paid for.