The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Williams, Beatriz. Our Woman in Moscow. Harper Collins, 2021.

Sasha and Iris Digby are in the Soviet Union awaiting extraction by the Americans. They are wanted by the Soviets because it has become known that Iris, an American defector to the Soviet Union, is a mole. She extracts information from her husband and passes it along to Western intelligence agencies. Her husband, a previous spy for the Soviet Union, does not know this. He is privy to Soviet intelligence, however, as he works at times for the Soviet government now that he has defected.

Iris is not interested in politics, and she has no loyalty to the Soviet Union despite having defected there. She finds herself in this situation because her husband, Sasha, had been working as a double agent. He was a western diplomat who was giving information to the Soviets. He did this not for money but because he believed in the Soviet cause, and he believed communism would make the world better. Iris knows all along that he passes along information to the communists, but she does not understand how deep he is in. While working as a spy in the West, Sasha falls into alcoholism and ruins his reputation. He uses the alcohol to numb his conscience from the double life he is living.

Iris is approached by Sumner Fox and is told that she can get her husband’s life spared if she will persuade him to defect to Moscow and pass along information to Western intelligence agencies. Iris knows that her husband will never betray the communists, so she convinces him to go without telling him about his need to act as a mole, and she acts as the mole instead. Once in Moscow, he stops drinking and is a better family man.

At one point, Iris reaches out to her sister, Ruth, who she has been estranged from for a number of years after Iris finds out that Ruth had been trying to break Iris and Sasha up. Iris tells Ruth via a letter that she is pregnant and that her previous deliveries were dangerous. Ruth finds this quite odd because Iris had not spoken to her in many years.

Ruth is approached by an intelligence officer named Sumner Fox. She eventually shows him the communication she received from Iris. He recognizes this as the secret code that she needs to be extracted. Sumner and Ruth team up as a married couple and go to Moscow to get the Digbys out. They say they must go because of Iris’s previous dangerous labors. She needs her sister there. While posing as husband and wife, Fox and Ruth fall in love.

While trying to leave the Soviet Union, the Digbys, Ruth, and Fox are captured. It is likely that Sasha will be put to death and the rest will be sent to labor camps. The lead KGB officer’s daughter, Marina, however, manages to save most of the Digbys. She had previously befriended Iris’s son, Kip, and shoots an officer trying to rescue him. Because turning her daughter in would lead to her daughter’s death, the KGS agent, Lyudmila, manages to get Iris, Ruth, the children, and Marina out of the country. Sasha likely dies in the Soviet Union, taking the fall for Iris. At the end of the novel, Ruth learns that Fox has been badly beaten and has been left in Moscow. She goes with medical professionals to rescue him.