Fifty-four-year-old army veteran and heart attack survivor Cal Paladin believes his life cannot get any worse, especially ever since his wife left him to join a desert-dwelling cult. Enter the United States Army. Cal, despite his poor health, gets called back to active duty service, along with his old army cohorts, to take part in a secret expedition to a parallel world. After things go horribly wrong, Cal and the remaining members of his unit are rescued by Russian commandos and taken to the city of New Arkaim, a Soviet colony established back in the 1950s. The inhabitants of the socialist colonial city possess no knowledge of the USSR's collapse back on Earth decades ago. And Alexei Podrovsky, head of New Arkaim's secret police, intends to keep it that way. Before long, Cal falls in love with Sofia Dashkova, a cultural hero of the colonial city whose star power is on the wane. Alexei Podrovsky thinks Sofia has outlived her usefulness. He wants her dead. Cal devises a way to save Sofia and himself, but Sofia is about to unleash a scheme of her own, one that will change the lives of everyone in New Arkaim.