Young Alexandra by Eion McRae

Alexandra's parents were aristocrats in old St Petersburg. With her dance master, her seamstress to make pretty dresses, and her French-speaking governess, Alexandra seemed destined for a brilliant debut in elite Russian society. But it never happened. Fearing attack by Bolshevik thugs in the turmoil prior to the Revolution of 1917, her family fled to a gritty life of farming far from the capital. "Young Alexandra" describes a bright girl's childhood in Russia, her coming of age in Estonia, and her youth in England and America. It is based on recollections that Alexandra (Meyendorff) Teploff (1907 - 2009) shared with the author during a great many conversations (in French, at least on Alexandra's side) during the 1990s. In Alexandra's telling, her words were clothed in love. Love of her family, and beyond that, love in an abstract sense: love of Mother Russia, and love of America, the country that let her in when she had nowhere else to go. They add up to a portrait of a person profoundly happy; one who has mastered the art of living.