A genuine gift for historical fiction enthusiasts: a deeply-detailed story of power, politics, and love, and the impossibility of keeping all three. In Swietoslawa, Elzbieta Cherezinska reveals to us a complex woman who was ignored by historians, rightfully elevating her to equal standing with her more-famous allies and enemies. It unspools the true history of two courageous siblings, Boleslaw--the first and future King of Poland, and his daring sister Swietoslawa, fated to a royal destiny in a great Norse kingdom. Ranging across Baltic shores to the northern reaches of Scandinavia, and far West to King Ethelred's England, Cherezinska propels us through a tale of great personal and social transformation, from pagan to Christian, and private to political.