Polostan

by Neal Stephenson Book 1 in the Bomb Light series.

First published 2024

Amazon

4.0(9,491)

Dawn Rae Bjornberg is born in the American West to a family of cowboy anarchists but spends her early childhood in post-revolutionary Leningrad, where her Leninist father renames her Aurora. Returned to Montana as a teenager, she learns to move between incompatible political worlds while the Great Depression intensifies conflict across the United States.

Gun-running and unrest in Washington place Dawn under federal suspicion and expose facts about her past that make remaining in America dangerous. Back in the Soviet Union, she is drawn into the intelligence organisation that will become the KGB, turning her divided identity into an asset for a state that expects loyalty to override family and personal belief.