“A com­pelling, deeply felt, and expert­ly researched sto­ry about the nature of evil and the very human price of fight­ing back against impos­si­ble odds. Fans of his­tor­i­cal fic­tions will love this nov­el.” — Kristin Han­nah, New York Times best­selling author of The Women

An exquis­ite his­tor­i­cal odyssey about three ordi­nary peo­ple ensnared in World War I’s chaot­ic after­math. Though strangers at first, their fates will entwine indeli­bly in their life-or-death quests for refuge, fam­i­ly, and mean­ing.

Mathilde is a recent­ly mar­ried young woman in a Russ­ian shtetl south of Kyiv. Despite the ongo­ing hard­ships and vio­lence, she is filled with hope for the life she is build­ing with her new hus­band and prays the civ­il war roil­ing their coun­try will soon end. But one after­noon a hor­rif­ic event forces her from the only home she has ever known, and an epic jour­ney begins.

In frigid north­ern Rus­sia, Michael is an Amer­i­can sol­dier work­ing as an inter­preter and trans­la­tor. Dis­mayed that the troops there, who should have gone home after the armistice, are now caught up in Russia’s civ­il war, he angers his supe­ri­or offi­cer and is sent to the front lines. He soon finds him­self in a fire­fight that will pro­pel him into dan­gers of a very dif­fer­ent kind.

And on the embat­tled streets of Lvov, Poland, par­ent­less chil­dren strug­gle to sur­vive. Sun­ny, a young boy, is one of them. With no mem­o­ry of his ear­ly life, he imag­ines that he is a prince sep­a­rat­ed from his roy­al par­ents. When he becomes unteth­ered from the gang of kids who have been both his fam­i­ly and his pro­tec­tion for longer than he can remem­ber, he must risk trust­ing some­one new if he is to make it through what lies ahead.

Based on true events and the author’s fam­i­ly his­to­ry, Per­ilous Beau­ti­ful World is a pow­er­ful, sweep­ing tale of courage, per­se­ver­ance, and con­nec­tion in a time when hope becomes the most per­ilous — yet nec­es­sary — act of all.