Carol Hebald's novel, A Warsaw Chronicle, depicts the moving portrait of Karolina Heybald, an American exchange professor at Warsaw University during the 1981 advent of martial law. Underlying the conflict between the Communist regime and Solidarity's struggle against it looms the threat of a Soviet invasion. In the midst of food scarcity and turbulent political upheaval, Karolina's attempts to locate a missing first cousin entangle her in the fate of her brilliantly gifted student, Marek, the son of a duplicitous Communist official. Torn by conflicting loyalties—a poet in service to his conscience, a soldier under orders to the state—Marek's only hope lies in Karolina's valiant efforts to secure his fellowship at her home university.