A Game of Illusion
A son of silence must choose between loyalty, love, and a dangerous truth.
The Executioner’s Son
In the spiritual heart of Russia now Soviet Union, the monasteries of Suzdal have become prisons of the Gulag. The spring thaw, the Rasputitsa, ejects the executed from the earth. Danton Larionov, the NKVD executioner’s son encounters Ekaterina Larionov, the Ukrainian storyteller, on Illian Meadow, who uses the spell of a fairy tale to deflect Danton’s brutality.
Years later, as a young officer, Danton is drawn into the hidden world of military deception. He encounters Ekaterina, the ward a powerful Soviet family. His love could cost him everything.
Caught between the shadow of his father’s trade, loyalty to his country, and a love that could destroy him, Danton steps into a game of illusion where truth itself is the most dangerous enemy.
From the gulags of Suzdal to the battlefields of Southeast Asia, this is a story of masks, betrayal, and impossible love in the long war between East and West.