The Holodomor Descendant’s Network would like to invite you to join Anderson’s Bookshop in Chicago for an author event and signing line with critically acclaimed author Katherine Marsh to celebrate the release of her new middle grade historical fiction novel, THE LOST YEAR: A SURVIVAL STORY OF THE UKRANIAN FAMINE. The event will take place on Wednesday, January 25th, at 7pm in Downers Grove store. Katherine will be in conversation with local author Kate Hannigan. After their talk, Katherine will take audience questions, and have a signing line.
Katherine Marsh knew about the Holodomor from an early age from her Ukrainian grandmother Natasha.
“My grandma immigrated to America in 1928, leaving behind two sisters and a brother in Ukraine who lived through the Holodomor. Family memories include starving children digging up the fields for rotten potatoes and funeral brigades collecting bodies for mass graves. In addition, in 1933, my grandma’s cousin Ignat, who had immigrated to the US earlier, was able to return to Ukraine and bring back his daughter, Nastya, who experienced the famine firsthand. Nastya could barely speak about her experience but when she did, the details were horrific—she remembered the silence of the village in winter after starving inhabitants had eaten all the cats and dogs. Growing up in Brooklyn in the 1930s, my mother was often chided for not eating and one of my grandma’s common phrases in her heavily-accented English was “Eat, eat!” I worked all this grief, guilt, and oral history into The Lost Year.”
Katherine thinks that the book is really important for American children, especially now.
“I was always surprised by how few Americans knew this history. I wrote The Lost Year to change that. When I wrote The Lost Year, I worried that kids wouldn’t know anything about Ukraine. Sadly, Russia’s invasion changed that, but American children still don’t know much beyond current headlines and there are historical parallels between how the Soviet government acted during the Holodomor and how the Russian government acts today. As a journalist, as well as a children’s book author, I am also concerned about young people and media literacy, so I wanted to tell this story because the Holodomor is a powerful case study in disinformation and how it shapes our understanding of history.”
Please, find more information about the author and the event here:
Author Event with Katherine Marsh/The Lost Year | Eventcombo
