Irina Kurnosova

New Year is a time of miracles. In life and Affairs Lena accompanies success, she knows exactly what she wants, and always achieves the intended goal. In the new year's schedule of a business woman there is not a single extra minute and it seems that nothing can make her stop. Little Stepan does not need expensive toys, but only a little love and home warmth. Desperate to find understanding in adults, he goes in search of Santa Claus to ask for a new mother. Winter city confronts him with Lena and the woman suddenly catches hopeful look of a child who saw in her the good fairy. This chance meeting will change their whole life…

The roaring twenties of the new century. The era of messengers, electronic cigarettes and universal digitalization. The main character is Andrey Mirkin, a promising head of a PR agency. He owes his success and beautiful life to women. Mirkin can seduce almost anyone, he is charismatic, courteous and cynically uses it. He goes head over heels, not thinking about how many lives he has ruined along the way. He just doesn't care. The cherry on the cake in the hero's career promises to be a multimillion-dollar tender. Mirkin's victory in it is guaranteed in advance. But no one knows how much dirt is behind this well-being. And in the coming days, it will overwhelm Mirkin.

Policeman Pavel Kravtsov is a rather strange man. If he has to handcuff someone, he apologizes and asks if he is pressing. He is ambitious but honest; he is young but thoughtful. With such inclinations, you can't really make a career in the city police. So a city man, senior Lieutenant Kravtsov, gets through to the remote village of Anisovka by an ordinary district police officer.

Albina's life changes in an instant: under threat of arrest, her oligarch husband leaves her, taking all the money with him. All that remains of the spouse are two children and a Russian factory on the verge of bankruptcy. Now Albina is forced to forget about the luxurious life in a London mansion and remember what she was told in business courses. Just to start life from scratch in a provincial town without a penny in her pocket, no one taught her.

Anya, a kind hardworking girl, lives with her mother Irina in the village of Opushkino. Irina has been working tirelessly all her life to ensure a happy future for her daughter, but the family is barely making ends meet.

Follows an Ukrainian Jewish family over 30 years against the backdrop of dramatic events in the Soviet Union in the first half of the 20th century: WWI, the Bolshevik revolution, the pogroms in Ukraine, the Stalinist repression, WWII and Nazi occupation, the ghetto and annihilation. It is ultimately a story about human nature, about the triumph of love against all odds (e.g. despite the seemingly incompatible backgrounds of the two lovers, Rakhil and Jakov) and of its resilience over time and circumstance. It is about family bonds, about human altruism, dignity and courage. Also about cruelty and the holocaust, a tribute to the Jews that suffered and to the non-Jews who were willing to risk their own lives to help them.