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NIGHT TRAIN TO ODESSA
MARY L. GROW, author
LITERARY FICTION, HISTORICAL NOVEL
It is 1919. The Russian Civil War rages in the Ukraine. Elvira Maria Andrushko, a mother, recently widowed, flees the embattled countryside bound for the safe haven, Odessa. As the night train approaches she is violently separated from her small children and arrives in the seaport alone and traumatized. Bewildered by the city’s harshness, alienated by unhelpful authorities, and tormented above all by her loss, she searches Odessa hoping to find her children.
When Elvira Maria meets Michail Lukashenko, an artisan with a puppet theatre, she is attracted by his charm and the fairytale performances that entertain hundreds of children, who could be her own. But the innocent faces cheering in the crowds are not all happy, nor have they all come to watch the show. Elvira Maria reluctantly enters an underworld where the price of life and the cost of war dictate the terms of survival.
NIGHT TRAIN TO ODESSA is a beautiful and moving novel of hope and courage, and a loving tribute to Odessa.
Reviews
Judith Claire Mitchell author of A Reunion of Ghosts
In this historical novel of love and lore, idealism and corruption, and, always, hope, Mary L. Grow writes with grace and conviction about a young widow searching for her missing children in the beautiful but beleaguered city of Odessa during the upheaval of the Bolshevik revolution. Night Train to Odessa is gripping and unforgettable, with writing so transporting I could feel the cold winter wind blowing across the Black Sea.
