The Photograph

The Photograph / Kat Karpenko
Pennsauken Township, NJ: BookBaby, c2020.
226 p.

I discovered this one online via my library; it's a story that was spurred by a family photo belonging to the author. It was a photo of her grandparents' full family, just before they left Ukraine for Canada in in 1928.

Karpenko has taken that photo, and some family stories, and created a novel that is deeply affecting. It's 1928, and the Karpenko family of Ukraine is feeling the looming pressure of the Stalinist government and its agricultural policies. Collectivization is going on, and any successful farmer is being branded an enemy of the state - their land and equipment should belong to the collective. Nicholai Karpenko sees no future except for more repression and state theft; he decides that his family should escape the Soviet Union and go to Canada. This is harder than it first seems, requiring some tricky planning for an escape. 

Not only that, but he can't convince any of his brothers or sisters to join them. In the end, it's only Nicholai, his wife Juliana and their three children who make their way to Canada, with a stop in Budapest to find the connections they need to leave Europe. The book is loosely arranged in three sections, starting with this emigration storyline. 

It then follows the rest of the family who stayed in Ukraine, over the years of 1929-1931, and then we experience the Holodomor, the terror-famine orchestrated by Stalin, over the years 1932-1933. These sections are historically accurate, and so quite horrific. The famine was severe, with millions of Ukrainians dying of starvation, a situation created by Stalin's policies - excessive grain quotas, restriction of movement of Ukrainian farmers, and genocidal intent. The book doesn't hide the truth, and we have characters suffering and dying. However, the book is written for school age readers, so the narrative style doesn't go into graphic descriptions. But it is clear what is happening. 

The terrible events are counterpointed by the love that this family has for one another, and the ways they try to help each other. Their survival is not assured but they keep on. And the connection with Canada in the end gives a longer view. 

This is hard-hitting but also a family story. It's well done, with a lack of overdone sentimentality, just a dose of reality. But the characters and their relationships make this a compelling read, one that brings forgotten history to life.  

To find out more about this book, you can watch Kat Karpenko's interview with HREC (Holodomor Research and Education Consortium).