During the long, hot summer of 1888, an extraordinary friendship blossoms between Anton Chekhov and a young doctor, Zinaida Lintvaryova. Struggling with her health, Zinaida has retreated to her family's quiet country estate, but this secluded existence is transformed when the Chekhov family arrives to spend the summer there. What begins as a journal Zinaida keeps simply to pass the time becomes an intimate story of her relationship with the middle Chekhov son, Anton Pavlovich, in the early days of his literary career.
More than a century later, the discovery of Zinaida's diary represents Katya Kendall's last chance to save her publishing house. It also raises a tantalizing question: Did Chekhov, known only as a short-story writer and dramatist, write a novel that has since disappeared? The answer could change history, and finding the manuscript proves an irresistible challenge for Ana Harding, the translator Katya hires. Increasingly drawn into Zinaida and Chekhov's world, Ana is consumed by her desire to find the lost book as she soon suspects that the manuscript is not the only mystery contained within the diary's pages.
