Strong Roots

 

Strong Roots: a memoir of food, family & Ukraine / Olia Hercules
NY: Knopf, c2025.
288 p.

I devoured this memoir of food, family and Ukraine. Olia Hercules is a well known Ukrainian cook based in the UK. When the invasion happened in 2022, she took part in many fundraising activities, encouraging restaurants and foodies in UK to create events and raise money. 

In this book, she shares what happened in the aftermath of the invasion to her personally and to her parents as they fled Kherson, near Crimea. And she takes that beginning and moves back into three generations of her family, their lives, experiences, values. As she notes in her acknowledgements, "Not one generation of my family has escaped dispossession, deportation or war."

This is a beautifully written family history, full of longing for Ukraine, with evocative recollections of natural beauty, food and family, and alongside that, the realities of war over a century, deportations, violence - and the way those things were not often discussed openly. She covers many years of Soviet rule, and the breakup of the regime, from her parents' experiences to her own. Her writing is so powerful I feel like I can see the places she describes for myself. She has a talent for metaphor and imagery, for tucking dark facts into lovely settings.

This is not a foodie memoir but food plays a role. Places are described using food based metaphors -- and she talks about family dinners, family recipes, about making food for her parents as they first arrive in Italy from Ukraine in 2022 -- using whatever she could find in Italy for borsch, and making bread: "Kneading dough is a sensory repetition that forces you to observe the moment, to let go of the insistent buzz of anxiety."

This is a five star read for me. The combination of history, food, family stories with the fluid writing style that makes you feel that Hercules is talking to you directly, all make this a fantastic book. I can't recommend it enough. Anyone wanting to know more about Ukraine needs to read this gorgeous story.

And if you love food too, even better. Make sure you check out Olia Hercules' cookbooks, especially Summer Kitchens, my favourite.