When June Carver made the choice to accompany her husband, Ethan, from their sunny beachside home in Los Angeles to the war-torn Balkans in 1996, she did not realize that in Bulgaria her home would be a concrete housing block with no hot water and feral dogs lurking in the shadows. She would never have imagined that her real journey would be from sheltered American wife to reviled Mafia mistress. In the gray and desolate city of Sofia, where Ethan is working on his doctoral thesis, June attempts to save her rocky marriage while struggling to understand her new home: a post-Communist country rife with organized crime and ethnic conflict, in which the poverty and corruption has led the oppressed people precariously close to revolution.
For June, a sunny Californian film production assistant whose free time was once filled with sushi happy hours, yoga and spa retreats with her friends, adapting to this frighteningly different country is the hardest thing she has ever faced. That is, until Ethan leaves her for Nevena, a young, hard-working maid who was orphaned as a child during an attack on her Muslim village in the mountains close to the Turkish border.
June is forced to stand on her own or admit defeat. She decides to stay in Sofia in hopes of reconciling with Ethan. She hires a language tutor, takes a job as a journalist, and is eventually seduced by Chavdar, a Mafia kingpin as charismatic as he is lethal. Ethan's love for Nevena deepens as he learns more about her tragic past and her loyalty to her little sister Boryana, an exotic dancer at one of the Mafia clubs. Boryana has betrayed her employer, dragging all of them into dangerous dealings with Chavdar and his henchmen.
With Chavdar, June enjoys lavish weekends in Turkey and Greece, expensive gifts and powerful physical chemistry, as well as bouts of terror. She soon comes to identify more with the passionate and proud Bulgarian working class, particularly her outspoken, chain-smoking, elderly tutor Raina. June finally realizes that the explosive revolution on its way is due to desperate poverty and injustice clashing with the outrageous excesses of Chavdar's dirty wealth. She leaves him, but not without a terrifying battle with the obsessive narcissist who can't bear to see his empire crumble and his conquests escape.
Ethan's loyalty to Nevena and her sister is unwavering to the point that he risks his life to save theirs by smuggling the girls out of the country before Chavdar's thugs can find them. Realizing that Ethan will never be hers again, June gives him her blessing to cement his relationship with Nevena. June not only survives her darkest hour but perseveres. She re-evaluates her role in the world and resolves to make it a more meaningful one. She remains in the Balkans working as a journalist, convinced for the first time that she can make a difference--in her own life and in the lives of others.
