Every city contains secret places. Moscow in the tumultuous 1990s is nodifferent, its citizens seeking safety in a world below the streets -- adark, cavernous world of magic, weeping trees, and albino jackdaws, where exiledpagan deities and faery-tale creatures whisper strange tales to those who wouldlisten. Galina is a young woman caught, like her contemporaries, in the seeminglawlessness of the new Russia. In the midst of this chaos, her sister Mariaturns into a jackdaw and flies away -- prompting Galina to join Yakov, apoliceman investigating a rash of recent disappearances. Their search will takethem to the underground realm of hidden truths and archetypes, to findthemselves caught between reality and myth, past and present, honor and betrayal. . . the secret history of Moscow.