As a child, Tina Morris dreamt a handsome prince would come and take her away to live happily ever after, but the reality was that her father was an alcoholic and her siblings called her ‘the little bitch’. Disillusioned and with a young daughter to support, she turns to prostitution and drugs, hiding her shame and fears behind the persona of ‘Courtney’, the tough parlour girl.
When Courtney and a friend agree to meet some visiting Russian sailors on board their fishing trawler, then begins a journey neither girl could ever have envisioned. Labelled ‘stowaways’ by the media back home in New Zealand, they find themselves sailing to Nakhodka, Russia, on a ship full of sailors with whom they cannot communicate.
After spending many days in a Russian dry dock and suffering malnutrition, Courtney becomes seriously ill and finds herself undergoing an operation under horrific conditions in a dirty sanatorium. She begins to wonder if she will ever make it home again. Her fate, her future, is then in the hands of sixty-six Russian fishermen who are destined to leave footprints in her heart.
To Russia for love is not just a true story about the wisdom of ‘looking before you leap’; it is also a love story between two people from very different worlds. One Russian fisherman named Igor falls in love with his ‘sea lady’, but will Courtney be able to break down her emotional walls and learn to love and trust again?
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