When Megan Buskey's grandmother Anna dies in Cleveland in 2013 Megan is compelled in her grief
to uncover and document her grandmother's life as a native of Ukraine. A Ukrainian American
Buskey returns to her family's homeland and enlists her relatives there to help her in her
quest-and discovers much more than she expected. The result is an extraordinary journey that
traces one woman's story across Ukraine's difficult twentieth century from a Galician village
emerging from serfdom to the bloodlands of Eastern Europe during World War II to the Siberian
hinterlands where Anna spent almost two decades in exile before receiving the rare opportunity
to emigrate from the Soviet Union in the 1960s. In the course of her research Megan encounters
essential and sometimes disturbing aspects of recent Ukrainian history such as Nazi
collaboration the rise and persistence of Ukrainian nationalism and the shattering impact of
Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. Yet her wide-ranging inquiries keep leading her back to
universal questions: What does family mean? How can you forge connections between generations
that span different cultures times and places? And perhaps most hauntingly how can you best
remember a complicated past that is at once foreign and personal?A painfully honest and
carefully researched journey of a Ukrainian American into her family's complicated and
difficult past. Anchored in the catastrophe of the Second World War and the subsequent
Stalinist repression of the Ukrainian peasantry the story flows unexpectedly to the author
herself into the unfolding drama of the current Russian invasion. Thoughtful and beautifully
written. -Jan Gross Princeton University author of Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish
Community in Jedwabne PolandThis book is not only important but captivating and instructive.
-John-Paul Himka University of AlbertaMegan Buskey's blend of tireless investigation with
thoughtful analysis and careful prose make this book an exemplar of the best traditions in
historical writing.-Wil S. Hylton author of Vanished: The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing
Men of World War II
