Black Sea Twilight
1980s Romania:
As the sun sets on the magical shore of the Black Sea and casts its last rays across the water, all Nora Teodoru can think about is pursuing her dream of becoming an accomplished artist - and of her love for Gigi, her childhood boyfriend from the Turkish part of town.
But storm clouds are gathering as life under Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu becomes increasingly unbearable. His secret police are circling, never far from the young couple's doors.
Nora and Gigi make plans to escape to Turkey. But nothing can prepare them for the events that follow...
Domnica Radulescu won a national prize for a volume of short stories when she was twenty, just before she fled her native Romania during Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship. She settled in the United States as a political refugee in 1983.She is a Professor of French and Italian Literature and Chair of the Women's and Gender Studies Program at Washington and Lee University in Virginia.
Her first novel Train to Trieste won the Library of Virginia Award for Best Fiction. Black Sea Twilight is her second novel. She lives in Lexington, Virginia, with her two sons.