Set at the foot of the Altai Mountains in Western Siberia, VERONIKA is a tale of love and betrayal. Love of one young man for a woman he could never forget; betrayal of his family, his land, and an entire people. Spanning continents, it is a story with indelible recollections of a childhood in the uncultivated Eurasian Steppe and wild Siberian forests, and the more civilized dreams of a future the hero does not yet fully understand. It is about his transformation from a simple boy with roots in the Russian soil, to a globetrotting entrepreneur with ever mounting ambition. Having spent the past five years living at the foot of the Altai Mountains on Russia's Western Steppe, Krolick gives us an eye-opening work of cross-cultural upmarket fiction. Based upon events unfolding in Russia's march towards modernization, it plunges deep into the myth, mystery, and psyche of an archaic worldview being swept away in Siberia's headlong rush to the West.