Opening
Winter 1972 at Belye Nochi, the family apple orchard: twelve-year-old Meredith Whitson aches to be seen by her aloof Russian mother, Anya Whitson (Vera Petrovna Marchenko). Convinced a shared story can open Anya’s heart, Meredith stages a Christmas play from one of her mother’s fairy tales—only to watch the night fracture into humiliation and silence.
What Happens
Meredith plans the performance with meticulous hope. She adapts her mother’s tale into a script and recruits her pixie-quick sister, Nina Whitson, and her best friend and crush, Jeff Cooper, to act. Their warm, watchful father, Evan Whitson, worries the subject will unsettle Anya, but Meredith’s longing persuades him. The orchard’s annual Christmas party buzzes with neighbors and lights as Meredith steps into the role of storyteller, determined to turn a fairy tale into a family tradition.
Onstage, the children tell of a peasant girl named Vera in a “Snow Kingdom,” stalked by a “Black Knight” whose carriages make people “turn to smoke.” For a breathless instant, Meredith feels seen—Anya’s eyes are on her alone. Then the world cracks. Anya smashes her cocktail glass, slicing her hand, and goes rigid. In a clipped Russian accent, she says, “This is hardly entertainment for a party,” dismisses the story as a “ridiculous fairy tale,” and scolds her daughters as “romantic and empty-headed.”
Guests scatter, the party collapses, and Meredith stands exposed in the wreckage of her offering. After Jeff slips away, Nina finds her; the sisters fold into each other, stunned. Meredith hears Evan trying to soothe Anya in the kitchen. Something in Meredith hardens. She tells Nina, “I’m never going to listen to one of her stupid fairy tales again,” sealing a private vow that will define the family’s silence for years.
Character Development
The prologue draws the battle lines of the Whitson home: a mother locked behind an unnamed past, daughters reaching for her through story, and a father who can’t bridge the chasm.
- Meredith Whitson: Earnest, organized, desperate for a “normal” family. Anya’s public rejection shatters her optimism and sparks the guarded self-control that will dominate her adulthood.
- Anya Whitson (Vera Petrovna Marchenko): Cold, watchful, affectionate mainly with her husband. Her violent response hints that the fairy tales conceal profound, unhealed trauma and anchors the novel’s Family Secrets and Hidden Pasts.
- Nina Whitson: Impulsive, game for adventure, less invested in planning but equally scorched by the fallout. Her fear and confusion expose the collateral damage of Anya’s silence.
- Evan Whitson: Warm buffer and peacemaker. His inability to avert or mend the outburst reveals both the depth of Anya’s pain and his limits in easing it.
Themes & Symbols
Themes
- Mother-Daughter Relationships: The attempt at connection—Meredith’s play—magnifies the rupture. What should be a bridge becomes a wall, establishing decades of misreading and distance between mother and daughters.
- The Enduring Impact of Trauma and War: Anya’s disproportionate fury signals buried wartime horrors. The imagery of a “Black Knight,” ominous carriages, and bodies “turning to smoke” points toward historical atrocity pressed into fairy-tale form.
- Storytelling as a Means of Healing and Connection: Story fails here because the participants aren’t ready—Meredith uses it to reach; Anya hears only pain. The moment asserts a crucial truth: stories heal only when both teller and listener can bear them.
Symbols
- The Winter Setting: The frozen orchard—Belye Nochi, “White Nights”—mirrors the family climate: beautiful, brittle, and cold. Dormancy stands in for emotional numbness.
- The Broken Glass: Anya’s shattered glass becomes the fracture point of the household’s fragile peace. The cut on her hand brings the past into the present and splinters Meredith’s childhood hope.
Key Quotes
“This is hardly entertainment for a party.”
Anya’s line rebukes not just the play but the premise that pain can be prettied into performance. It signals a hard boundary—her past will not be displayed or domesticated.
“I forgot how romantic and empty-headed girls can be.”
The cruelty lands as armor. Anya protects herself by belittling her daughters’ innocence, revealing how survivor’s bitterness can misfire into contempt and deepen generational divides.
“I’m never going to listen to one of her stupid fairy tales again.”
Meredith’s vow is both self-defense and self-banishment. By rejecting the stories, she rejects the one thread that could one day lead her back to her mother’s truth.
We don’t know how to say goodbye:
we wander on, shoulder to shoulder.
Already the sun is going down;
you’re moody. I am your shadow.
The Anna Akhmatova epigraph frames the Whitson women’s predicament: physically together, emotionally estranged. It foreshadows a journey of walking side by side in silence until speech—story—becomes possible.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
This prologue functions as the novel’s spark. It explains the origins of Meredith’s control, Nina’s restlessness, and Anya’s impenetrability, while planting the central mystery of Anya’s past. The night’s rupture justifies years of silence and resentment—and sets the narrative’s task: to convert a “ridiculous fairy tale” back into lived history so the family can finally speak, and heal.