The trip has its highs and lows, as Mila unexpectedly develops a friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt, but faces a threat from a misogynistic male marksman who sends her threatening notes. In 1942, Soviet leaders send Mila with a delegation to Washington, D.C., to meet with President Roosevelt in a bid to seek American support. In battle, Mila is steadfast about completing her missions with her partner, Kostia, and also finds time to write letters to Slavka. When the Germans invade Russia, Mila, who's already trained at a marksmanship school, enlists in the army, is assigned sniper duty, and earns the nickname 'Lady Death' for her high number of kills. She's estranged from her husband, Alexei, a surgeon whom she met when she was 15. In 1937, Mila Pavlichenko studies history at Kiev University and raises her five-year-old son, Slavka. Quinn (The Rose Code) draws on a historical female sharpshooter from WWII in her exciting latest. Still reeling from war wounds and devastated by loss, Mila finds herself isolated and lonely in the glittering world of Washington, DC-until an unexpected friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and an even more unexpected connection with a silent fellow sniper offer the possibility of happiness.īut when an old enemy from Mila’s past joins forces with a deadly new foe lurking in the shadows, Lady Death finds herself battling her own demons and enemy bullets in the deadliest duel of her life.īased on a true story, The Diamond Eye is a haunting novel of heroism born of desperation, of a mother who became a soldier, of a woman who found her place in the world and changed the course of history forever.

When news of her three hundredth kill makes her a national heroine, Mila finds herself torn from the bloody battlefields of the eastern front and sent to America on a goodwill tour. Given a rifle and sent to join the fight, Mila must forge herself from studious girl to deadly sniper-a lethal hunter of Nazis known as Lady Death. In 1937 in the snowbound city of Kyiv, wry and bookish history student Mila Pavlichenko organizes her life around her library job and her young son-but Hitler’s invasion of Ukraine and Russia sends her on a different path. The bestselling author of The Rose Code returns with an unforgettable World War II tale of a quiet bookworm who becomes history’s deadliest female sniper.

Book the diamond eye by kate quinn