Available:*
Material Type | Shelf Number | Shelf Location | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Book | FICTION BIRDSELL, SANDRA | Adult Fiction Collection | Searching... |
Summary
Summary
Published in Canada as "The Russlander," this historical novel is set in 1917Russia and depicts peaceful lives uprooted by revolution.
Reviews: 2
Booklist Review
An elderly resident of a nursing home in Manitoba, Canada, relates the story of her girlhood in czarist and revolutionary Russia to an anonymous interviewer. The daughter of the overseer of a prosperous Mennonite Russian estate, Katya Vogt naively believes the circumference of her relatively privileged position and lifestyle to be inviolate. Her fragile illusions are cruelly shattered when the Bolsheviks and the Russian peasantry aggressively turn against the affluent German-rooted Mennonite community. When most her family members and friends are murdered during the course of a brutal early-morning raid on the farm, she must learn some harsh lessons in survival to persevere in a world gone suddenly mad. This authentically detailed piece of historical fiction serves as an evocative reminder of a permanently vanished place, time, and way of life. --Margaret Flanagan Copyright 2004 Booklist
Library Journal Review
This historical novel juxtaposes the serenity and nurturing qualities of family, community, and nature with the violence and wanton destruction of an anarchistic peasant revolution. Katya and her family live in a small, pacifist Mennonite community in the oasis of the Russian steppes. In a single-page quasiprolog, Birdsell (Agassiz) unfurls a gripping tension that persists throughout, as Katya and her family are caught in the tide of the Russian Revolution: discontent breeds random violence, which ultimately destroys her close-knit family and village. Though Katya is an adolescent at the time of the events, the reader moves back and forth through time and space via her eyes. In this compelling, beautifully descriptive novel, nature is a vital allegory for beauty, accomplishment, unity, and purpose; conversely, in the hands of marauding usurpers, it becomes a metaphor for mayhem, devastation, and death. Recommended for all collections.--Sofia A. Tangalos, SUNY at Buffalo (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
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