The great Russian writer Mikhail Afanasyevich had several sisters, but he maintained especially close relations with Vera Afanasyevna, who was only a year younger than him. She was born in Kyiv, received a good education at a gymnasium and a pedagogical institute, and then married a descendant of the famous partisan-hussar-poet Denis Davydov. Between her studies and marriage, Vera Afanasyevna managed to work in a frontline hospital, providing assistance to wounded Russian soldiers and officers during World War I.

During the Civil War, the sister of the future writer lived in Crimea, after which she returned to Kyiv and then moved to Moscow, where she spent the rest of her long life. Vera Afanasyevna often communicated with her brother, who shared with her his dream of a peaceful life surrounded by family, as it had been in Kyiv. However, this dream of Mikhail Afanasyevich was not fully realized: he never saw his younger brother again, and the sisters gathered in his apartment only a few hours before his death. The writer was only 48 years old, but he felt that he was leaving and hurried to say goodbye. Vera Afanasyevna stayed by her dying brother's bedside until the end and outlived him by 32 years. Her life was not easy: possessing a beautiful voice and many talents, she sang in a choir, worked again in a hospital during the war, and at the end of her life fell ill and passed away in a psychiatric hospital on January 22, 1972.