Latvian Elegy

Title: Among the Living and the Dead: A Tale of Exile and Homecoming on the War Roads of Europe

Author: Inara Verzemnieks
Edition: W.W. Norton Company, 2017
Setting: Latvia and the US
Genre: Memoir, Family History

My husband asked me what I was reading, and I told him, "one of the saddest stories ever told."  Don't let that dissuade you, however, from reading this elegy to the author's Latvian family.  Verzemnieks is from a Latvian peasant family; this book recounts the family's history from the late 1880s to today.  And it's quite a history, from the superstitions and myths that ruled and gave meaning to her great-grandparent's lives to the ambition that led them to own their farm to the misery the family lived through during WWII and during Soviet control of their country.  

The writing is vivid:  just as her grandmother described her lost farm in Latvia so that young Inara would be able to feel, see, smell, and touch it, so grown Inara describes it just as vividly to the reader.  A voice is compared to "a match drawn across phosphorus", and the family farm is described as "the roof rises above the grass line to meet us, though its edges sag, brushing the ground in places, like the hem of a skirt coming loose.”  The stories her grandmother tells her about the myths and legends of Latvia seem almost like preparation for the stories of the war and aftermath which are like particularly terrible Grimm's fairy tales.  But this is also a hopeful tale, one of survival, one of resilience, one of peace found after grim struggle.

The narrative skips around through time, but the author's skill is such that I had no trouble following it.  The beauty of the writing and the story make this moving book highly recommended.