A sweeping Cold War love story set against the crumbling Soviet empire
Moscow, 1986. Natalie Chester has finally achieved her dream: a posting as an American news correspondent in the USSR at the very moment history pivots. But within days of her arrival, the Chernobyl disaster erupts, her fiancé abandons her, and her bureau chief wages a relentless campaign to destroy her career.
Then she meets Anatoly Kuznetsov—a rising Soviet diplomat whose Nordic looks and reformist ideals set him apart from the gray functionaries of the Kremlin. Their attraction is immediate and dangerous. As they navigate secret meetings, KGB surveillance, and the disapproval of both governments, Natalie and Tolya become allies in a larger mission: to help end the Cold War before it ends humanity.
From the radioactive aftermath of Chernobyl to clandestine trips through the Estonian countryside, from war-torn Afghanistan to a cherry blossom proposal in Tokyo, their love affair unfolds against the decade’s most dramatic events—the Reykjavik summit, Gorbachev’s glasnost reforms, and the brutal suppression of Baltic independence movements. But as the Soviet empire begins its death throes, the couple discovers that the hardliners willing to kill for the old order will stop at nothing to preserve their power.
Inspired by the author’s own experiences as a Moscow correspondent during perestroika, Dispatches from Moscow is a meticulously researched thriller that captures the intoxicating danger of journalism in an authoritarian state and the impossible choices faced by those who dare to imagine a better world. It’s a story of professional ambition and personal sacrifice, of idealism tested by reality, and of a love that burns brightest in the shadow of the Iron Curtain’s final days.
Carol J. Williams is a retired foreign correspondent who covered the historic upheaval that ended the Cold War in an award-winning 35-year career with Associated Press and Los Angeles Times. She lived through the USSR’s brief era of hope for reform and the tragic consequences of its failure. She followed Eastern Europe’s euphoric rebellions that toppled Communist tyrants from Berlin to Bucharest. In Yugoslavia, she documented the rise of ethnic and religious nationalism fanned by corrupt leaders who pushed their peoples into devastating wars. Her dispatches from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine traced those conflicts to unresolved ideological disputes from their days of imperial oppression. Williams is a graduate of the University of Washington and holds a journalist law certificate from Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. She lives with her husband Ken Olsen, a retired editor, in Silverdale, WA.
Williams will be in conversation with Marie Yovanovitch, the author of the New York Times best-selling memoir, Lessons from the Edge. During her thirty-three-year diplomatic career, Ambassador Yovanovitch served as the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine (2016-2019), the Republic of Armenia (2008-2011) and the Kyrgyz Republic (2005-2008). She worked in a number of senior State Department positions, as well as at U.S. Embassies in Moscow, London, Ottawa, and Mogadishu. Ambassador Yovanovitch has earned multiple awards, including the Presidential Distinguished Service Award twice. She is currecntly a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a non-Resident Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University, and a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute of Global Politics, Columbia University.