First published 2025
When Russian forces crossed into Ukraine in February 2022, poet Victoria Amelina abandoned her novel to become a war crimes investigator. She turned her attention to the women joining the resistance around her. Amelina profiles lawyer Evgenia, who traded her practice for military service. She follows Oleksandra, who catalogued tens of thousands of war crimes and earned the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize. She tracks librarian Yulia, who helped expose the kidnapping and killing of a children's author. Amelina photographed bombed schools and cultural sites. She collected survivor accounts and witness statements about atrocities. Through this work, she rediscovered her role as storyteller. The book chronicles both the destruction war brings and the price people pay to resist it. Amelina died from injuries sustained in a Russian missile attack on a restaurant in Donetsk region on June 27, 2023. She was thirty-seven. Her diary captures the transformation of ordinary women into defenders of their country.
Genres: history, non-fiction, biography-memoir, 21st-century, current-affairs, diary
Vibes: haunting, intimate, poignant, thought-provoking, urgent
Tropes: collective-resistance, transformation-through-crisis, witness-testimony
Setting: Ukraine, Russia, Donetsk
Period: 2022, 2023, 21st century
304 pages · Paperback · William Collins
Content warnings: death, violence, war