Nina Sobanska lives with her mother and father, Count and Countess Sobanski, on a modest estate in Podole, a small, predominately Polish province on the southwestern edge of the Russian Empire. Isolated in the sleepy backwater, farming the fertile soils of the steppe, they hear little of the mounting political turmoil that will soon draw the three great empires of Europe into the greatest conflict the world has ever seen. This great war and the resulting Russian Revolution caused vast social upheaval and led to the eradication of whole social classes and their way of life. Will the Sobanskis manage to keep their heads down and ride out the war? Or will tragedy strike before they have time to flee?