Lost in Moscow

In 1977, when Kirsten Koza was 11-years-old, her parents sent her to summer camp in the Soviet Union. This is a book about children, but certainly not for children.

When most parents consider sending their child to summer camp, they imagine a sunny lake a few hours out of the city. In 1977, the parents of eleven-year-old Kirsten Koza sent their pigtailed, sass-talking offspring on a summer trip to the Soviet Union with only fifty dollars in her pocket. Lost in Moscow tells the story of Kirsten's summer camp hi-jinks.

Excited but a little apprehensive about her circumstances, Kirsten does what every young girl from suburban Canada does at camp: complains about the food, balks at using the toilets, and mocks her group's leaders behind their backs. But she also evades the Soviet Red Army in a foot race through and around Red Square, receives extended radiation treatments for a minor case of tonsillitis, and makes a gut-churning, unauthorized parachute jump without being totally certain whether her parachute would open or even stay on.

Told from the point of view and in the voice of the young Kirsten, Lost in Moscow is sex, politics, religion, fashion and finance through the eyes of an eleven-year-old. Hilarious and at times hair-raising, this is a highly unusual travel memoir, a story about children, but definitely not for children.