Imprisoned in the Gulags for a crime he did not commit, Benya Golden
joins a penal battalion made up of Cossacks and convicts to fight the
Nazis. He enrolls in the Russian cavalry, and on a hot summer day in
July 1942, he and his band of brothers are sent on a suicide mission
behind enemy lines--but is there a traitor among them? The only thing
Benya can truly trust is his horse, Silver Socks, and that he will find
no mercy in onslaught of Hitler's troops as they push East.Spanning ten
epic days, between Benya's war on the grasslands of southern Russia and
Stalin's intrigues in the Kremlin, between Benya's intense affair with
an Italian nurse and a romance between Stalin's daughter and a war
correspondent, this is a sweeping story of passion, bravery, and
survival--where betrayal is a constant companion, death just a heartbeat
away, and love, however fleeting, offers a glimmer of redemption.