A harrowing story of a Ukrainian family who escaped Stalin’s regime to live as homesteading farmers in northern Alberta in 1938. Life was so difficult it’s hard to imagine that it could have been an improvement on what went before. It’s a mesmerizing story written so tenderly that the reader comes to know each of the family closely.

I have to hand it to the immigrants who farmed in this part of Alberta. By identifying the area from towns Mitchell mentioned, I can say I know the area well and can testify to the ground filled with rocks and bogs, and of the fire hazard and unbelievably harsh winters. Some of those log cabins are still standing, empty and forlorn, yet creating a picture in the imagination of life in the past. ( )

I've read half of this book, and I have no interest in continuing.
Shandi Mitchell is a competent enough writer, but I'm finding this book totally unengaging. I don't care for or about any of the characters, and I can't help but feel I've heard this story many times before (and told much better - think Steinbeck). Everything is just a bit too familiar, too predictable, too cloying. It's a sad story, and that's the kind of book that often draws me in, and mercifully it's not sentimental or pathetic. But something is missing here - that burst of originality, those moments that pull a reader in and won't let him go no matter what, those phrases and breathtaking uses of language that make a reader say: "Wow!" ( )

A novel about a Russian immigrant family homesteading in western Canada in the 1930's. It was very well written with good character development. a sense of impending inevitable disaster loomed throughout. ( )

An immigrant Ukrainian family suffers hardship on the tundra of Western Canada. One man was in prison for two years for using some of his own grain. He and his children work the fields owned by his sister, while her absent husband lives a life of depravity. His own wife, Maria, with love for her family, creates a garden that helps feed them all and earns extra money, while she mends every stitch of clothing they wear. Then the absent brother in law returns and wreaks havoc on everyone. ( )

Beautiful and heartbreaking. I don't even know what else to say about this amazing novel. I wish all authors had as much empathy as Shandi Mitchell. Ugh stunning. ( )