What he doesn’t say is that he’s got an extraordinary imagination, paired with a real talent for creating realistic scenes, both hair-raising times of danger-like being strafed-and intimate moments of pain. ![]() Although he researched the story carefully, he considers the book historical fiction rather than narrative nonfiction because he filled in missing pieces with his imagination. ![]() He explains in an author’s note that the novel is based on the story of a family living barely two miles from his home in Montana. Sullivan brings the couple and their extended family to life, complete with their triumphs and failings sacrifice, love, bitterness, self-interest and courage. That and other policies led to millions of Ukrainians dying in the 1932–33 famine, a tragedy that was also part of the Martels’ history. Under Stalin, many of the farmers were deported to Siberia. ![]() ![]() The family is part of the German community that the Czar had invited to Ukraine a century earlier because of their skill for growing winter wheat, which fed the Russian Empire. It’s a question of survival in 1944 as Emil and Adeline Martel forge west with their two young sons, fleeing Stalin under the protection of the German Army, a situation that Mark Sullivan, the author, is careful to show is repulsive to the Martels.
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