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MWSA Review
Ward Anderson’s Escape from Ukraine: One Man’s Journey to Freedom spans seventy years of a tenacious Ukrainian’s fight for survival. The story begins in 1944, with his family fleeing German and Russian occupation, and ends in 2014 with Putin’s invasion of Crimea.
Ten-year-old Dmytro and his family flee their Ukrainian village, heading west. “They stole our grinding stone to prevent us from making flour. . . . How can a farmer in Ukraine die of hunger?” The perilous odyssey of walking a thousand miles to the protection of American troops in Austria is filled with tragedies and horrific hardships. They nearly starve and freeze to death. Jan, a stranger, atoning for his previous barbaric behavior as a Nazi soldier is savior, teacher, friend, and father to Dmytro whose name he changes to Luboš (to appear Czechoslovakian). Luboš grows up in Prague, falls in love, and for decades survives even more hardships and loses—alternating between despair and hope.
What a relief when Luboš finally settles with his family in Eastern Ukraine, relishing well-deserved contentment. His idyllic twilight years are disrupted, however, with yet another occupation: Russia invades Crimea and 80-year-old Luboš, once again, must escape from Ukraine. “[B]lood-red flags of the star, hammer, and sickle. . . had been absent for twenty-three years. . . . Shreds of the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag smoldered.” He proclaims, “This time, I am Jan,” as he initiates his well-thought-out plan to deliver his family to waiting arms in Prague.
Escape from Ukraine is a work of fiction but is surely the history of countless Eastern European families, including this reader’s grandmother’s escape. Meticulously researched, Anderson lays out the history as we watch the 2022 incursion of Ukraine on the news.
While enthralling, Escape from Ukraine is not a quick read. It is, at times, difficult to follow the vernacular dialogue. Part One will break your heart over and over, but Luboš will win your heart as he perseveres.
Review by Sue Rushford (March2023)
Author's Synopsis
To protest the 2014 Russian invasion of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, I wrote Escape From Ukraine. My novel follows Luboš as he copes with the excesses of Joseph Stalin, the Nazis, Communism, and the overreach of Vladimir Putin. Completed in 2020, the book was a metaphor for the threat to Baltic countries and Ukraine from a relentless Federation of Russia. I was fortunate that my drafts were reviewed by Ukrainian friends, one was a Ukrainian Naval Officer.
Predictably, Putin’s imperial ambitions led to the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and I updated and republished Escape From Ukraine.
In a fertile but vulnerable borderland coveted by powerful empires, a young Ukrainian and his peasant family wanted nothing more than to tend their allotment. But geography placed them in the path of fanatical Communists, conquering Nazis, and the advancing Red Army. They had no choice but to flee west in 1944, led by a German Wehrmacht deserter, to the safety of American forces.
Trapped behind the Iron Curtain, Luboš is a participant in the significant events of his era: the death of Stalin, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Prague Spring's rise and fall, the Velvet Revolution, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
During perilous times in the shadow of the USSR and then Russia, Luboš finds love and tragedy and strength to guide his family. The 2014 invasion of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea by Russian forces is a personal threat. Seventy years after fleeing Ukraine as a boy, he must escape again to safety with his daughter and grandson.
Format(s) for review: Paper and Kindle
Review Genre: Fiction—Historical Fiction
Number of Pages: 277
Word Count: 82,000