Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko is a history student with a young son and an estranged husband when the Germans invade the Soviet Union. Mila decides to join the Red Army and instead of going into nursing, she becomes a sniper. She soon racks up a tally of 187 confirmed kills and is quite well known because of this. Mila is courted by Alexei Kitsenko, and though she first resists his advances they start seeing each other. However, their relationship comes to an abrupt end when Kitsenko dies after Mila’s estranged husband Alexei operated on him. Then Mila and her team are sent to Sevastopol where her tally climbs to 309. At Sevastopol, she was injured and spent some time in hospital.
After she recovered from her injury, Mila was sent to the United States to convince the president Franklin Delano Roosevelt to send troops to the Soviet Union and help the Red Army fight the Nazis. Mila’s relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt is remarkable – the two women become friends during the time Mika spends in the States.
I loved this book: Kate Quinn is one of my auto-buy authors, in fact there’s a book coming out later this year that I’m really looking forward to! Her books are well researched and bring history to life. Lyudmila Pavlichenko was an actual sniper in the Red Army and led a very interesting life. After the war, Lyudmila went back to her studies and became a historian and as such, she met Eleanor Roosevelt again when she came to the Soviet Union in 1953.
I highly recommend this book!
Read for the ShelfReflection Reading Challenge 2026
Prompt 35: A book reviewed on Shelf Reflection
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️