Every summer young Andre* visits his grandmother, Charlotte Lemmonier, whom he loves dearly. In a dusty village overlooking the vast Russian steppes, she captivates her grandson and the other children of the village with wondrous talesÑwatching Proust play tennis in Neuilly, Tsar Nicholas IIÕs visit to Paris, French president Felix Faure dying in the arms of his mistress. But from his mysterious grandmother Andre* also learns of a Russia he has never known: a country of famine and misery, brutal injustice, and the hopeless chaos of war. Enthralled, he weaves her stories into his own secret universe of memory and dream. A poignant story of a Soviet boyÕs ascent into adulthood in the 1960s and Õ70s, DREAMS OF MY RUSSIAN SUMMERS is an epic tale full of passion and tenderness, pain and heartbreak, mesmerizing in every way....

May 24, 1941: Alexeï Berg, a classical pianist, is set to perform his first solo concert in Moscow. But just before his début, his parents -- his father a renowned playwright, and his mother a famed opera singer -- are exposed for their political indiscretions and held under arrest. With World War II on the brink, and fearing that his own entrapment is not far behind, Alexeï flees to the countryside, assumes the identity of a Soviet soldier, and falls dangerously in love with a general officer's daughter. What follows is a two-decades-long journey through war and peace, love and betrayal, art and artifice -- a rare ensemble in the making of the music of a life....