‘Perseverance, grit and sheer pluckiness’ Sherry reviews #HistoricalFiction Sunflowers Under Fire by @DianaStevan, for Rosie’s #Bookreview Team #RBRT

Today’s team review is from Sherry. She blogs here https://sherryfowlerchancellor.com/

Sherry has been reading Sunflowers Under Fire by Diana Stevan

Perseverance, grit and sheer pluckiness describe the heroine of this fictionalized story about the life of the author’s grandmother. What a lady she was. From the opening sequence when she gave birth by herself on the kitchen floor, got up and cooked for her husband who just joined the army and then walked the food a number of miles while half a day post-partum, to her bravery when she decided to move her family to an unknown land where they didn’t know the language, Lukia is someone to admire. She was an amazing human being and the author captured the spirit of this lady in a way that made this reader relate to her (even though I’ve never been faced with anything like the situations Lukia faced).

The heroine handled herself well and kept her family fed and with shelter in all kinds of adversity. The losses she suffered were horrible, but she didn’t let them daunt her or cause her to lose her faith.

I very much enjoyed reading this book even though it was dismal and heartbreaking in parts. My admiration of Lukia grew throughout the book. She was just not going to sit down and take it when life didn’t go her way.  If you like tales of fortitude and overcoming tribulation, I recommend this one highly.

4.5 stars

In this family saga and Great War story, love and loss are bound together by a country always at war. A heartbreakingly intimate novel about one courageous woman.

In 1915, Lukia Mazurets, a Ukrainian farmwife, delivers her eighth child while her husband is serving in the Tsar’s army. Soon after, she and her children are forced to flee the invading Germans. Over the next fourteen years, Lukia must rely on her wits and faith to survive life in a refugee camp, the ravages of a typhus epidemic, the Bolshevik revolution, unimaginable losses, and one daughter’s forbidden love.

Based on the true stories of her grandmother’s ordeals, author Diana Stevan captures the voices of those who had little say in a country that is still being fought over.

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With Its Strong Mother / Daughter Relationship @deBieJennifer Enjoyed #HistFic Lilacs In The Dust Bowl by @DianaStevan

Today’s team review is from Jenni. She blogs here https://jenniferdebie.com/

Jenni has been reading Lilacs In the Dust Bowl by Diana Stevan

There’s something about a mother/daughter story that always gets me. Perhaps because I am a daughter who has a strong relationship with her mother, perhaps because I look forward to having my own daughter someday—but stories, poetry, films, and novels about the bonds and contrasts between mothers and daughters have always been the kind of art I gravitate towards.

Lilacs in the Dust Bowl is the second installment of Diana Stevan’s chronicle of her grandmother’s life, and it revels in exploring the mother/daughter relationship between Lukia, who anchored Sunflowers Under Fire (2019), and her teenaged daughter, Dunya.

Dunya, grows up to be Diana Stevan’s mother, and tells Stevan the family stories that have been woven into these two novels, just for everyone keeping track of the metatext at home.

Stevan’s wise decision to expand the perspective to incorporate Dunya’s side of things brings texture and depth to an already compelling story. Where Lukia adapts to her new surroundings in one way, Dunya grows and changes in another, pushing against her mother at times and pulling with her at others.

Yet there is always love.

Where a weaker writer might make this a mother vs. daughter story to add conflict or drama, Dunya and Lukia never work against each other. They work in different ways, but always together, and always with love and for the betterment of the family as a whole. Besides, there is enough external conflict in Lilacs without attempting to layer in unnecessary tension between these two.  

Having grown up in Texas, I forget that the dustbowl was not a purely American issue, but rather something that affected the entire continent on a truly biblical scale. Dust storms, insect swarms, crippling heat and punishing cold, Lukia and her family must weather them all in the first years of their immigration to Canada, constantly battling the elements, the bank, and the poor soil on the farm they’ve been allotted to scrape their way towards survival.

As with Sunflowers, Lilacs is not all heartbreak and struggle. There are barn dances and new friends and a truly delightful anecdote about gopher tails. There is struggle, but in the end, there is also reward.

In the end, all of that struggle was not for nothing.

In the end, Lukia finds triumph in this new home she has made for herself and her children.

Lovingly researched and written, Lilacs in the Dust Bowl is a worthy sequel to Sunflowers Under Fire, detailing this second chapter in the history of Lukia, Dunya, and Stevan’s family, and exactly the kind of generational story so many people need right now.

5/5

A family saga, set during the Great Depression, when hope and opportunity clashed for all who tried to make a living off the land.

Based on the true story of her grandmother’s trials, Diana Stevan continues the amazing tale of Lukia, a woman who showed—no matter what life threw her—where there’s a will, there’s a way.

When Lukia Mazurets, a Ukrainian peasant farmer, and her family immigrate to Canada in 1929, she has no idea the stock market is about to crash and throw the world into a deep depression. For the next seven years, she and her children will be tested not only by life as immigrants in a strange country but also by the ravages of nature. The threat to family security will also come from her rebellious son, her willful daughter, her arrogant brother, and the married son she’s come to rely on. And to add to the turbulence in her home, she’ll be romanced, awakening desire she thought was long gone.

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Set in early 20th Century Ukraine, @TerryTyler4 reviews #HistoricalFiction Sunflowers Under Fire by @DianaStevan, for Rosie’s #Bookreview Team #RBRT

Today’s team review is from Terry. She blogs here https://terrytylerbookreviews.blogspot.com/

Terry has been reading Sunflowers Under Fire by Diana Stevans

Even before I began to read this, I was so impressed by what Diana Stevan has done – this is the first part of a partially fictionalised biography of her grandmother, Lukia Mazurets, who Stevan knew as a young child.  In the notes at the back, she writes that her mother told her the story of their lives, and she pieced the rest together by extensive research of the history of that place and time.  The research is evident throughout, without seeming intrusive; the customs and daily toils of such resilient peoples’ lives were fascinating to read about.  Also most interesting was the effect of the political situation, from WW1 to 1929, and how little the peasants actually knew; all news about events elsewhere in the country came via word of mouth.  Aside from this, the nature of Lukia’s incredibly hard life, with so much tragedy, meant that events happening thousands of miles away were not her immediate concern. 
The novel begins in 1915, with her husband going off to fight for the Tsar just as Lukia has given birth to a sixth child – Stevan’s mother.  The story is simply written, very readable, and I flew through the first half.  During the last third, I sometimes felt that events were whizzed through too fast, and the storytelling became a little too simplistic, as if she was racing to the end. Now and again I would have liked a little more depth and detail, and did consider that there might be an excess of material for one novel.  

In itself this is a marvellous book to have written, and I imagine it is greatly treasured by Stevan’s family, but it also stands up as a commendable piece of historical fiction about the lives of the common people of a country about which I knew little.  I have the sequel, and look forward to finding out what happens next.

In this family saga and Great War story, love and loss are bound together by a country always at war. A heartbreakingly intimate novel about one courageous woman.

In 1915, Lukia Mazurets, a Ukrainian farmwife, delivers her eighth child while her husband is serving in the Tsar’s army. Soon after, she and her children are forced to flee the invading Germans. Over the next fourteen years, Lukia must rely on her wits and faith to survive life in a refugee camp, the ravages of a typhus epidemic, the Bolshevik revolution, unimaginable losses, and one daughter’s forbidden love.

Based on the true stories of her grandmother’s ordeals, author Diana Stevan captures the voices of those who had little say in a country that is still being fought over.

AmazonUK | AmazonUS