In 1941, the Germans surrounded Leningrad and began what would become the 900-day siege of that city. Hundreds of thousands died of starvation and exposure, and the event itself would become one of the most atrocious in Russian (and world) history. For Marina, the main character of Debra Dean's debut novel, The Madonnas of Leningrad, the siege was not only historical but personal, as she experienced it once in her young life and, again, through her fading memory while in the grips of Alzheimer's disease.

The novel introduces Marina as an elderly woman preparing to attend her granddaughter's wedding but unable to retain the facts or people involved in the upcoming celebration. Her daughter Helen, along with Marina's husband Dmitri, provides some explanation of the extent of Marina's poor condition, as things from Marina's point of view are hazy and drift back and forth from the present to those days in Leningrad when she was fighting for her life, the first time.

But it's Marina's point of view that drives this story, and Dean does a wonderful job of moving the reader back and forth between the two settings smoothly: quite a feat, considering that the state of mind of an Alzheimer's patient is not predictable and connections are tenuous.

The memory of the siege, to which Marina keeps returning, involves her work as a docent in the Hermitage Museum, and her attempts, with many others, to remove the thousands of paintings to the basement of the museum in protection. She and other museum workers, along with their families, hole up in the museum during the siege, doing whatever they can to stay alive. Dmitri, with whom she has been engaged and spent only one passionate evening, has gone to the war and is presumed missing or dead. As the first winter drags on and Marina, having lost all her remaining family members, is starving to death and losing all hope, an elderly docent gives her one means of distraction: creating a memory palace in her mind. Anya tells Marina to memorize the paintings and their positions on the walls of the museum (where now only the frames remain), thereby saving the beauty of the art within herself. Remembering is Marina's act of survival through the siege, and flashing forward to the present as she succumbs to her horrible disease, we understand that the loss of her memory palace may be the last stronghold of her life crumbling away.

Driven by her memories, Marina wanders away from the site of her granddaughter's wedding and a large search-and-rescue mission is assembled. In her mind, she is remembering a visit by a group of soldiers to the museum during the siege; amidst all the destruction and fear, she gave them a tour of the museum, showing them the pieces of art still assembled and walking them through her memory palace for the rest. In contrast to all the grief in this novel, this part provides a most enchanting episode, as Marina helps the soldiers to "see" the beauty of the many Madonnas in the paintings:

Marina gazes at the panel [which once held The Holy Family by Raphael]. "I don't know if I'll be able to do it justice," she admits..."On one side," she says, pointing, "we have Mary. She is very beautiful but very distant and unaware. And quite apart from her, over here, is Joseph. He's much older than Mary. He leans on his walking stick and looks almost frail. Between them"ÑMarina points to the exact center of the blank squareÑ"standing on his mother's lap, is the Christ child. He's a mama's boy. He is eyeing Joseph fearfully and his arms are reaching out for his mother...

The boys are staring at the blank square, their eyes unfocused and dreamy.

"They have halos," an older boy murmurs.

"Why yes, they do," Marina responds, a little taken aback. "You have been here before?" she asks him.

The boy's eyes drop to the floor. "No, comrade," he murmurs. "It is just..." he points to the framed space, unable to complete his sentence.

Marina is puzzled, but she continues. "One wouldn't notice the halos at first, but they are there, fine as piano wires. It's almost as though Raphael was saying that what sets them apart from any other family is almost invisible. They might be us."

The sadness in this novel is overwhelming at points, but Dean creates such a wonderful and believable character in Marina that her pain becomes very true to the reader, and the survival tactics that Marina uses, in the present and the past, are that much more meaningful. The Madonnas of Leningrad explores the connection between tragedy and beauty in an innovative and inspiring way, and one that I would definitely recommend reading into.