A Tale of Exile and Homecoming on the War Roads of Europe
by Inara Verzemnieks
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jul 2017
288 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
"Extraordinarily tender and finely wrought." - Eliza Griswold, author of The Tenth Parallel
"It's long been assumed of the region where my grandmother was born…that at some point each year the dead will come home," Inara Verzemnieks writes in this exquisite story of war, exile, and reconnection. Her grandmother's stories recalled one true home: the family farm left behind in Latvia, where, during WWII, her grandmother Livija and her grandmother's sister, Ausma, were separated. They would not see each other again for more than 50 years. Raised by her grandparents in Washington State, Inara grew up among expatriates, scattering smuggled Latvian sand over the coffins of the dead, singing folk songs about a land she had never visited.
When Inara discovers the scarf Livija wore when she left home, in a box of her grandmother's belongings, this tangible remnant of the past points the way back to the remote village where her family broke apart. There it is said the suspend their exile once a year for a pilgrimage through forests and fields to the homes they left behind. Coming to know Ausma and the trauma of her exile to Siberia under Stalin, Inara pieces together Livija's survival through years as a refugee. Weaving these two parts of the family story together in spellbinding, lyrical prose, she gives us a profound and cathartic account of loss, survival, resilience, and love.
"Starred Review. A highly polished memoir of enormous heart." - Kirkus
"Spellbinding and poetic, this is a moving tribute to the enduring promise of home." - Booklist
"Verzemnieks does not shirk from confronting the extremities of human behavior; but she also gives us the rich textures of a world in which poetic mythology coexists with sophisticated modernity, the dead mingle with the living, and the hardships of a traumatic past are countered by the strength of memory and of lasting attachments." - Eva Hoffman, author of Exit into History
"The astute reportorial sensitivity of a master Eastern European historian like Timothy Snyder, as filtered through the lyric sensibility of a García Márquez, and suffused in the aching nostalgia of a latter-day Proust." - Lawrence Wechsler, author of The Passion of Poland
"Poetic, melancholy, colored by the dark beauty of the northern landscape, this memoir of loss and recovery from the tragedies of the twentieth century will linger in your imagination, widen your historical perspective, and make you grateful that language has such power." - D. J. Waldie, author of Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir
"An exquisite book for the ages as it unfolds from its first mysterious sentence into a masterpiece about war, survival, memory, and, most movingly of all, human need." - David Finkel, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of The Good Soldiers
This information about Among the Living and the Dead was first featured
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Inara Verzemnieks teaches creative nonfiction at the University of Iowa. She has won a Pushcart Prize and a Rona Jaffe Writer's Award, and has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa.
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