Twelve hours in the last day of the life of Empress Catherine I, hours that flow backwards in time between the old Catherine, bed-bound and weakened by tuberculosis, and her memories of the life that led to this point. Voltaire has called the life of the woman born Marta Skowronska, and later wife of the Emperor Peter I, "a Cinderella story". But this novel destroys any fanciful notions of a fairy tale. Orphaned by the plague, shipped off to live with an abusive aunt, sold as a servant and rushed into a forced marriage, raped by Russian soldiers and taken prisoner during the Great Northern War of 1702: these were the origins of the woman who would become the first empress of Russia. Yet Catherine rebuilds her life, becoming the lover and later wife of Peter I - his closest confident, a powerful diplomat in her own right; a complex, strong and equal companion to the ruler of the Russian Empire at a time of great change and modernisation. Their union is not without great challenges however, for this is the story of clashing Eastern and Western cultures in one sometimes toxic marriage. It's about psychology and addiction, broken and reconstructed characters, the destruction and devastation of warfare, and the lure of dreams and fantasy.