The Jewel of St. Petersburg by Kate Furnivall

The Jewel of St. Petersburg was written in 2010 as a prequel to Furnivall’s first and second novels, The Russian Concubine (2007) and The Red Scarf (2008), making this a trilogy about Lydia Ivanova Friss, and her parents, Valentina Ivanova and Jens Friss. The Jewel of St. Petersburg is set in tsarist Russia from 1910 through the revolution in 1917, and it depicts the class struggle which led to the emergency of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. The setting is dramatic as the country is coming apart at the seams. Valentina is the heroin of this book as she chooses to defy her parents and pursue nursing rather than becoming a concert pianist as her noble class upbringing had intended. She also defied her father who expected her to marry a brutal military man. Rather, she pursued an engineer who was trying to improve the tunnels for the sewage system beneath the city. But, both Valentina and Jens were privileged and when the revolution came, they were both enemies of the new State, so they were forced to try to flee Russia, if only they could get out, along with 5-year-old Lydia.

Furnivall captured the incredibly chaotic mood of the times when Valentina was looking for Jens who had disappeared after he was captured and imprisoned by the Bolsheviks: “Valentina searched for Jens day and night for eight months. But people had vanished all over the city, friends and loved ones there one day and gone the next, so no one wanted to know, no one cared. They were all too frightened for themselves. Mobs roamed the streets, opened prisons, slaughtered police. They set fire to large houses at whim and torched a courthouse and the offices of the secret police. To Okhrana agents were hanged from lampposts in their turn. The city was ablaze with red banners and posters: DESTROY THE TYRANTS and VICTORY BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE OF RUSSIA.”

This is a period piece, which is what captured my interest, and I’m eager to finish the other two books in the trilogy. The characters are compelling and Furnivall did an excellent job setting off the well-meaning Friss family with bad guys from all levels of society. Victor Arkin was an excellent Bolshevik villain.