Our Woman in Moscow: A Novel

Beatriz Williams

Jun 2021 · Sold by HarperCollins

About this ebook

"A captivating Cold War page-turner." — Real Simple

The New York Times bestselling author of The Summer Wives returns with a gripping and profoundly human story of Cold War espionage and family devotion.

In the autumn of 1948, Iris Digby vanishes from her London home with her American diplomat husband and their two children. The world is shocked by the family’s sensational disappearance. Were they eliminated by the Soviet intelligence service? Or have the Digbys defected to Moscow with a trove of the West’s most vital secrets?

Four years later, Ruth Macallister receives a postcard from the twin sister she hasn’t seen since their catastrophic parting in Rome in the summer of 1940, as war engulfed the continent and Iris fell desperately in love with an enigmatic United States Embassy official named Sasha Digby. Within days, Ruth is on her way to Moscow, posing as the wife of counterintelligence agent Sumner Fox in a precarious plot to extract the Digbys from behind the Iron Curtain.

But the complex truth behind Iris’s marriage defies Ruth’s understanding, and as the sisters race toward safety, a dogged Soviet KGB officer forces them to make a heartbreaking choice between two irreconcilable loyalties.

Ratings and reviews

A well-constructed espionage novel, based VERY loosely on the Cambridge spy ring of the mid 1900s, as Democracy and Communism were beginning their big face-off. Be sure to read the Author's Note at the end of this historical novel to learn more about the true story. It's 1940 and American twins Ruth and Iris MacAllister are on an extended holiday in Rome, amid rumors of a widening World War II. When word comes that the U.S. government wants all Americans to evacuate Italy, Ruth makes immediate plans to depart. But Iris is reluctant. She's met someone, the charismatic Sasha Digby, with mesmerizing blue eyes. She'd rather stay with him. This is the basic set up to the novel. Moving back and forth through time (yes, another book that uses a non-linear writing style), the book follows the story of of these three main characters over the next 12 years. Traveling from America to England to the Soviet Union -- there is plenty of drama. Spies, alcoholism, estrangement, infidelity, the KGB, affairs, and lots of family secrets. So that you aren't completely sure, until the very end, who are the good guys and who are the bad ones. This is fast-moving historical fiction that is primarily plot driven, where character development takes a bit of a back seat. But it's a quick, compelling read and introduced me to a chapter in U.S. history I knew nothing about.

About the author

Beatriz Williams is the bestselling author of over a dozen novels, including The Beach at Summerly, Our Woman in Moscow, and The Summer Wives, as well as four other novels cowritten with Lauren Willig and Karen White. A native of Seattle, she graduated from Stanford University and earned an MBA in finance from Columbia University. She lives with her husband and four children near the Connecticut shore, where she divides her time between writing and laundry.