Dasha cannot imagine life without her sister. Masha is feisty and fearless. Dasha is gentle, quiet and fears everything; from the Soviet scientists who study them, to the other defective' children who bully them and the healthies' from whom they must be locked away. For the twins have been born conjoined in a society where flaws must be hidden from sight and where their inseparability is the most terrible flaw of all. Through the seismic shifts of Stalin's communism to the beginnings of Putin's democracy, Dasha and her irrepressible sister strive to be more than just the together twins', finding hope and love in the unlikeliest of places. But will their quest for shared happiness always be threatened by the differences that divide them?