Leningrad, 1941. A city once dreamlike, now besieged by the Nazis - buried in snow, cut off from any help... A city filled with women desperately struggling to save their children and themselves - at any cost...

Seattle, 2000. Anya Whitson loses her husband and feels the years and the sorrow weigh down on her unbearably. It is time to reach out to her estranged daughters. Slowly, hesitantly, she begins to tell them a fairy tale about a beautiful little Russian girl who lived in a magical city a whole lifetime ago...

Nina and Meredith have heard the beginning of the fairy tale many times, but never the end. This time, determined to uncover the truth behind the myth, they will press their mother to tell the whole story. And they will discover a secret so unimaginable that it will shake them to the core – and make them see their mother, their family, and their own lives in a different light.

The Winter Garden is an epic love story set in Russia during World War II, but also a story about the unbreakable bonds between women - mothers, daughters, sisters - guilt and redemption. It is a story about war - not of heroes, but of ordinary people who carry it within them even when it has long since ended.