Sana Krasikov

This was a wild ride of a book. Krasikov tells the story of Florence, a young Jewish woman coming of age in Brooklyn and feeling stifled by the life expected of her. It's the height of the Depression and she's outraged at both the stark inequality she sees around her and the lack of opportunities for women. She gets a job with a firm connecting the Soviets with American companies and meets a Soviet engineer and after his return to the USSR, she sets out in 1934 to join him.

She's not the show more only American emigrating eastward at the worst possible time. And when she arrives, she finds the Soviet Union less open and free than it had presented itself. But Florence has grit and stubbornness and she makes a life for herself, marrying and having a son, before being arrested and sent to the Gulag.

None of that is a spoiler as there's a second story being told concurrently; that of her son, a man with an adult son who emigrated to the US in his teens and is now working with an American oil company, seeking to take advantage of the newly open Russian economy. But Russia in 2008 isn't a safe place to do business, and Julian is also tasked by his wife with bringing their son home from Russia, where he went to take advantage of the new business opportunities there.

Florence's story is impossible to walk away from. I couldn't stop reading about this idealistic and stubborn woman who was negotiating her way through a dangerous world. She was a very real character living through the most interesting of times. Julian's story, which begins as he is a child surviving in a Soviet orphanage, started well, but eventually it couldn't keep pace with Florence's story. As her situation became more and more perilous, Julian's became the safe world of a comfortably-off American executive. The story of doing business in Putin's Russia was interesting, but it couldn't compete. And, like in so many novels in which a modern story brackets the historical one, one story became a drag on the other.

I did love this book. Krasikov was born in Ukraine and was raised in Georgia, so her depiction of the people and environment were starkly vivid. I will certainly be watching for her next book to be released. show less

I have been waiting for Krasikov's first novel since the 2008 publication of her short stories, and I was not disappointed. This is a profound and beautiful family story but not just another entry in the history-of-Russia-through-the-eyes-of-a-family book. Florence Fein is a Communist true believer, an American who leaves it all behind to make a life in the young Soviet Union. It grows up and around her, swallowing her and her family whole; her story is mirrored by that of her adult son, show more struggling with his own child who is also trying to make a life in the new Russia, itself poised to swallow *him*. Or will it? This book is about so many things- secrets, promises, regrets, redemption. Just beautiful. show less

Sana Krasikov’s engrossing novel spans nearly eighty years, and follows three generations of the Fein and Brink families

In the early 1930s, left-leaning idealist Florence Fein, already disillusioned with life in Brooklyn following the Depression, witnesses the appalling poverty and casual racism (and specifically antisemitism) while working in Ohio as liaison and interpreter for a Soviet trade agency that is trying to purchase specialist mill components. Her experiences there, and a show more burgeoning friendship with one of the Russian delegates, lead her to decide to emigrate to the Soviet Union. Her family are appalled at her decision but are unable to dissuade her.

Life in soviet Russia is not the idyll she had anticipated, but she manages to forge a life, working with Russians. After a false start at Magnitigrosk, she repairs to Moscow where she meets several fellow American expats. Before long, she has set up home with Leon Brink, another American who has found work with Tass, the official news agency for whom he is a reporter.

The story moves back and forth between Florence’s struggles to adapt to her new life in the 1930s to her son Julian, who, in 2008, is helping his American firm in negotiations with a recently privatised, formerly State-owned petrochemicals conglomerate. While in Moscow, Julian meets up with his son, Lenny, who has been living there for fifteen years, working in a succession of consultancy roles.

Krasikov shines a light upon the deprivations and terror that were prevalent during Stalin’s rule. Florence’s idealism is armour-plated, but it does gradually start to disintegrate, as she comes to realise that life in Moscow in the late 1930s is more dystopia than Utopia. The alternating narratives work very effectively. The episodes in which we view Florence struggling to keep going, and the ghastly sacrifices and concessions she has to make in order simply to survive, are augmented by Julian’s reminiscences some seventy years later, as he tries to navigate through the labyrinthine mix of bureaucracy and blatant commercial extortion.

The book represents an overwhelming success. A cross-generational epic, that spans a horrific regime and its long reverberations down to the current day, it also shows the power of family love, and its ability to triumph over even the most powerful waves of self-delusion. show less

Back in 2011 I ran across Sana Krasikove's first book, ONE MORE YEAR: STORIES (2008), and was simply blown away by this young woman's talent. In my review of that book, I had this to say: "Remember this name, readers: Sana Krasikov. Because we're definitely going to be hearing more good things about her." And, later: "... the talent; the talent is the thing here. Sana Krasikov is a writer, by God. I'll be watching for the novel she's working on. Hurry up, Sana. I'm waiting."

Well, this year show more her first novel has arrived, and THE PATRIOTS is simply an amazing accomplishment. Weighty, heavy, deep - these are a few adjectives that will come to mind when you pick up this novel, because, at 560 pages, this is a book you will have to spend some time with, a serious, globe-spanning and complex story of families in turmoil, torn apart and reunited (although not always completely). With today's often shortened attention spans, some readers may shy away from a big book like this, but I'm here to tell you, it is well worth your time.

Florence 'Flory' Fein is the central character here, an intelligent young Jewish woman from Brooklyn, who finds work with Amtorg, the Soviet Trade Mission in NYC in the early 1930s. On a temporary assignment to Ohio, she meets and falls hard for Sergey, a Russian engineer. She follows him back to Russia, but things do not end well for Flory. Because this is not a simple emigrant's happily-ever-after sort of story. It is instead an intense and detailed look at life inside the Soviet Union from the 1930s, through WWII and Korea (the Stalin years), the Cold War years, the eventual collapse of the USSR in the early 90s, all the way up to the present time, Russia and the Putin years. Flory's husband, son and grandson all become prominent characters too as the story progresses.

Sanikov obviously spent years researching and writing this book, and it shows. Because 'deep' doesn't even begin to describe the descriptive details that play such a convincing part in Flory's story of political intrigue, life in crowded communal apartments, how her US passport is confiscated (and she is made, against her will, a Soviet citizen), how she is sucked into a secret police plot of lies and accusations, her arrest and starving years in a Siberian Gulag, her part in the questioning of an American pilot shot down over North Korea in '51. I mean this is one of those generational 'sagas' that covers over seventy years of history.

THE PATRIOTS is, however, surprisingly contemporary in its story, perhaps because of the inclusion of the years of Putin, who is, of course, very much in the news these days, with his interference in world politics and elections. In fact, Flory's son, Julian, tells of Putin erecting a statue in Moscow's Dzerzhinsky Square of -

"His mentor, Yuri Andropov, who gave the KGB its ingenious psychiatric diagnosis of 'sluggishly progressive schizophrenia.' This allowed the state to fill up its asylums with anyone protesting its insanity. But, for the most part, Andropov's philosophy was endearingly primitive: 'destruction of dissent in all its forms.'"

Putin's Russia, in short, is reverting back to the repression of Stalinist times. And recently he has been successful in spreading his poisonous message to other parts of the western world. Yes, this book is very effective in making its readers consider what is happening right now, right here, in this country.

Yes, this novel is simply one hell of an accomplishment. I was not wrong about this writer. "The talent is the thing." And Sana Krasikov has that in spades. THE PATRIOTS was a book worth the wait. Bravo, Ms. Krasikov. Very highly recommended.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less