Raina, fourteen, and her ten-year-old sister Amara don't get along. On a road trip to a family reunion, the two are left alone in the family van when it breaks down.

"A Year Without Mom follows twelve-year-old Dasha through a year full of turmoil after her mother leaves for America. It is the early 1990s in Moscow, and political change is in the air. But Dasha is more worried about her own challenges as she negotiates family, friendships and school without her mother. Just as she begins to find her own feet, she gets word that she is to join her mother in America-- a place that seems impossibly far from everything...