The True Meaning of Love: A Novel

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • This powerful novel by bestselling author Danielle Steel is a stirring story of the lives of ordinary people during wartime.

February 24 is the eighteenth birthday of a Ukrainian ballet school student named Vlad. It also happens to be the day that the first bombs of the 2022 Russian attack land on his homeland. As life for every person in the country is turned upside down in a moment, Vlad is immediately called up to serve in the military. But as much as he wants to defend his country, he is desperate to get his girlfriend, Tatyanna, an orphan whose only home has been the ballet school, out of the country.

With their home under siege, Tatyanna tries to make her way to safety in Poland. Also joining the refugees is Yulya, who is torn between getting her young children across the border and staying at the side of her husband, Symon, and her elderly parents, Petro and Oxana, who refuse to abandon their home. As millions flee, Vlad and Symon join a volunteer civilians’ unit to fight. Even elderly citizens like Petro and Oxana are given AK-47s, though soon starvation becomes as much of a threat as the encroaching troops.

Sasha, an obstetrician, and Anton, a surgeon, who are secretly lovers, stay behind to treat the never-ending waves of wounded. When the Russians bomb hospitals, the heroic couple finds themselves delivering babies in bomb shelters.

Through the stories of Vlad, Tatyanna, Yulya, Symon, Sasha, and Anton—each struggling to protect their loved ones and preserve their own humanity—Danielle Steel tells a gripping and deeply moving story of regular people surviving as a war rages around them.