Light at Lavelle by Paullina Simons

 

I have just read the most stupendous book: Light at Lavelle by Paullina Simons. Thank you Pan Macmillan for my copy.

In 1929 the stock market was crashing in America while at the same time Joseph Stalin was sending his troops into Ukraine to ‘collectivise’ all farms; which, in effect, meant forcing farmers to produce impossible yields which were to feed all of Russia in accordance with communist ideology. In reality, farmers were being dispossessed of their properties, starved, brutally beaten and killed, also in accordance with the rules of communism.

Finn Evans was an affluent Boston stockbroker; Isabelle Lazar was a farmer from Ispas, a small farming community in Ukraine. The stock market crash caused great anguish all over America, bringing destitution to rich and poor alike; the  massively unworkable policy of prohibition presented a new crime in the illegal transportation of alcohol from Canada; and previously comfortable people were grasping at any chance firstly to hold onto their homes and then just to feed their families.

Meanwhile in Ukraine, Isabelle, her husband and children and her parents and brothers were literally fighting for their lives. Eventually, through shocking and dramatic circumstances Isabelle arrives in Boston and this powerful, epic story begins to unfold, moving between life as she and Flynn Evans’s family are living it, and the past in Ukraine.

I’m finding it impossible to come up with the right words to describe this utterly absorbing story. I felt I was watching the whole thing roll out in ‘Glorious technicolor, breathtaking CinemaScope and stereophonic sound’ (1960s reference)! I want everybody I know to read it! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Published byPan Macmillan