A good book.
A different world.

Zhenia is thirty-four, lives three hundred and fifty kilometers away, and for years has known her mother only as a voice on the phone asking for money. She hasn't paid. She has given something else.

In a disused natural history museum, Irina sleeps for eight months. A doctor without a license keeps records. An unlicensed therapist puts her memories in order: Tiraspol, Moscow in the Soviet Union's last winter, a man with beautiful hands, a child who watched. The readings improve. The woman gets lighter. Only the life she brought with her refuses to shrink.

When she wakes, she has a different body and is the same person. And her daughter has to face her.

How far can a rescue go when the person being saved never agreed to it?