Among the Living and the Dead: A Tale of Exile and Homecoming on the War Roads of Europe
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.55 (870 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 039324511X |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-04-19 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
They would not see each other again for more than 50 years. Her grandmother’s stories recalled one true home: the family farm left behind in Latvia, where, during WWII, her grandmother Livija and her grandmother’s sister, Ausma, were separated. Coming to know Ausma and the trauma of her exile to Siberia under Stalin, Inara pieces together Livija’s survival through years as a refugee. There it is said the suspend their exile once a year for a pilgrimage through forests and fields to the homes they left behind. “Extraordinarily tender and finely wrought.” Eliza Griswold, author of The Tenth Parallel“It’s long been assumed of the region where my grandmother was born…that at some point each year the dead will come home,” Inara Verzemnieks writes in this exquisite story of war, exile, and reconnection. Weaving these two parts of the family story together in spellbinding, lyrical prose, she gives us a profound and cathartic account of loss, survival, resilience, and love.. Raised by her grandparents in Washington State, Inara grew up among expatriates, scattering smuggled Latvian sand over the coffins of the dead, singing folk songs about a land she had never visited.When Inara discovers the scarf Liv
Inara Verzemnieks teaches creative nonfiction at the University of Iowa. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa. She has won a Pushcart Prize and a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing.
“A highly polished memoir of enormous heart.” - Kirkus (starred review)“Verzemnieks does not shirk from confronting the extremities of human behavior; but she also gives us the rich textures of a world in which poetic mythology coexists with sophisticated modernity, the dead mingle with the living, and the hardships of a traumatic past are countered by the strength of memory and of lasting attachments.” - Eva Hoffman, author of Exit into History“Spellbinding and poetic, this is a moving tribute to the enduring promise of home.” - Booklist“The astute reportorial sensitivity of a master Eastern European historian like Timothy Snyder, as filtered through the lyric sensibility of a García Márquez, and suffused in the aching nostalgia of a latter-day Proust.” - Lawrence Wechsl
"A tale of exile and homecoming" according to Bigglesworth. "The road I must travel to reach my grandmothers lost village is like tracing the progression of an equation designed to restore lost time" this sentence captured me and kept me reading: "Among the Living and the Dead" This the beginnings of her homecoming. It is history as poetry, prose and philosophy all woven together. This new breakthrough style of memoir, new to me, reads like a novel, and a love story. Inara's search for her grandmothers, an. "This treasure" according to Nancy Jarmin. The gifted writer of this excellent book folds the reader into her family. With her, we experience the struggle of family members forced into exile abroad and feel their longing for their people and the cherished homeland they left behind. Together, we drive and walk the quiet lanes of northern Latvia, some disused and now nearly grown over, to find the family elders who suffered not only the war but decades of deportation, privation and Soviet oc. Beautiful, resonant Beautiful, resonant, horrifying, edifying, and tragically relevant. I absolutely could not put it down. Don't start it if you have plans; you'll cancel.