Reading from Homesick alongside Lara Prescott’s The Secrets We Kept

Prescott won the 2016 Crazyhorse Fiction Prize for the first chapter of her gripping debut novel, which uses historical details to tell the story of Sally and Irina, two well-educated women who are sprung from the CIA’s typing pool to smuggle the manuscript of Dr. Zhivago out of the Soviet Union so it can be published. Intercutting Sally and Irina’s adventures—one is already an accomplished spy and the other is learning fast—with scenes from the lives of Pasternak and his beloved muse, Olga Ivinskaya, Prescott gives a vivid picture of Cold War-era politics and social mores.