The Silence of Trees

The Silence of Trees / Valya Dudycz Lupescu
Chicago: Wolfsword Press, c2010.
334 p.

Another story of Ukrainians in America for today's post. This one is from 2010, and it is about the Ukrainian American experience, even though the older characters recall their WWII and post war experiences throughout, and the effects on them are still clear. 

But their children, born in America, and their grandchildren, now completely American, do not have the same connections to their Ukrainian past or the longstanding distrust of Germans and Russians that their grandparents do.

However, this story is centred around Nadya Lysenko, 70 and living in Chicago, surrounded by her children and grandchildren. And around her secrets, many dark ones that she has kept from her family, and even husband, for decades. 

At 16, Nadya snuck out of her house to visit a fortuneteller in the woods; when she returned home, her family was dead, and home destroyed, by soldiers. Overwhelmed with survivor guilt, she flees, and eventually ends up in a DP camp in Germany. These traumatic experiences are revisited throughout the book, along with her time at the DP camp, where she also met her husband. 

The story investigates family, history -- both personal and wartime history -- and the power of folklore and myth in retaining a culture as well. The narrative weaves between present-day Chicago and Nadya's past in Ukraine and Germany, and shows how the wounds she suffered leave her with strong reactions to present day events, like when her granddaughter brings a boyfriend to dinner, who is of German descent. This causes a family furor. 

This is a meditative and reflective story, though, looking at how the events in a life shape a person, how not all of these events can be chosen or avoided. And it looks at the presence of the past in the current day, a preoccupation that I am always drawn in by in my reading. I thought this book was a fascinating combination of the past - war, tradition, myth, superstition, family, and a woman's examination of her own life. And beautifully written. Really loved it.