Swimming in the Daylight

In September 1984, Lisa Paul, an American college student living in Moscow and working as a nanny, enters Inna Meimans house for her first Russian language lesson. And so begins a two year friendship and fight for Innas life. Swimming in the Daylight chronicles Innas struggle to shed her refusnik status and to be granted a visa to travel to America, seeking medical treatment for the cancer that is slowly killing her.Inna reveals an indomitable spirit as she endures a perverse reality as a citizen of the Soviet Unionshe must deny invitations from countries in the West to receive life-saving cancer treatment due to her inability to receive a visa from her own government. This refusal, Inna explains to Lisa, is the Soviet authorities way of persecuting her and her husband Naum, a member of the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group fighting for human rights in the USSR. Spurred by outrage and the desire to help her friend, Lisa returns to the United States, vowing to do all she can to get Inna out of Moscow. Lisa stages a hunger strike, holds a press conference, and galvanizes American politicians to fight for Innas freedom. All these efforts eventually succeed in pursuing Mikhail Gorbachev to issue Inna a visa in December 1986, and she finally steps foot on American soil. At a time when international strife seems insurmountable and worries at home seem to paralyze, this story will teach people everywhere that it is the courage inside that defines a person and can change the future.