KATUSHA BOOK ONE - EDGE OF DARKNESS This is a story of courage, survival and family; of self-sacrifice, betrayal, brutality, and suffering; it is a tale of love, told against the backdrop of the bloodiest conflict in human history: the 1941-1945 war between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Seen through the eyes of a Ukrainian teenage girl, KATUSHA is not only a coming-of-age story, but a carefully researched account of one of the most turbulent and important periods of the twentieth century. The story opens with Katusha's graduation from her tenth and final year of school. The next morning, Sunday June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany invades the Soviet Union. The girl and her family flee to the forests to begin a partisan war against the German occupiers.