The story is a intricate tale of family, the changes on political persuasions through the decades and the bond that develops between grandson and grandmother on their travels across Europe. The grandmother is generous and endearing with a touch of the aristocracy about her, which is revealed to be exactly her origins when she takes her grandson back to the beautiful estate that was once her childhood home. As the grandmother persona takes control of the storyline, you are instantly transported to a time when women were not respected for their intelligence, but she was solely educated at home and her brother Hugh installs his opinions of the world on to her. Her sense of betrayal, when she finds out her brother had abandoned his former ideological ways of thinking leads her determined to travel to Russia herself. Her life will barrel into new political persuasions and extend her understanding of the world in exciting and dangerous ways