It is based on the true story of American schoolgirl Samantha Smith who wrote to Yuri Andropov, the Premier of the Soviet Union, at the height of the Cold War.

Set in 1982 during the Cold War era, a ten-year-old American girl called Jenny Jones writes to the Soviet Premier asking him why he would want to use the nuclear bomb.

In Bookforum, Roxane Gay called it "a novel of grand and intimate scope, artfully balanced between the political and personal," adding that it was both "a compelling character study and a psychological thriller.

[5] In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Nathan Deuel suggested it was "as convincing and absorbing a portrait of post-Soviet Russia as you'll read," adding that "at its heart, it's also about America.

"[3] She concluded that it was, "a hugely absorbing first novel from a writer with a fluid, vivid style and a rare knack for balancing the pleasure of entertainment with the deeper gratification of insight.