After reading his grandfather's lyrical warm memoirs of a Chekhovian childhood in the remote village of Sergievskoye, Serge Schmemann was determined to visit the home of his ancestors. His journey was a starting point for a remarkable and deeply personal look at two hundred years of Russian history. It's a story told through the prism of Sergievskoye, now known as Koltsovo - won by Schmemann's ancestors in a card game, and their home until expelled by the Bolsheviks in 1918. Nineteenth-century Russia is brought vividly to life: the devotion to czar and church; the summertime parties; the endless winter nights of music; the social life of Moscow and the local festivals; the peasants and their masters. Then comes the Revolution, when members of the family flee into exile or die; the estate is largely razed to the ground, its lands depleted, its remaining inhabitants impoverished.
