Meredith and Nina Whitson are sisters, but it's hard to find women more dissimilar. One is a stay-at-home mom who has always believed that there is no better fate than to get married, raise children and manage a family apple nursery. Another dreamed of traveling, became a photojournalist covering humanitarian disasters, and travels around the world, avoiding conversations about the future and family. The father's illness brings the sisters together in their parents' house. They have never seen anything but icy disapproval from a mother with Russian roots, and even now Anya does not try to get closer to her daughters, showing the detachment they are well familiar with. As a child, only one thing united them with their mother: a fairy tale about a poor girl and a prince, which she told the girls at night. Realizing that he is dying, the father asks his daughters to listen to the tale - to the very end. So begins the journey of two women into the mother's past, into her life in besieged Leningrad, into a terrible and beautiful icy world.