American Ending

An Oprah Daily pick for spring 2023

David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction Finalist

A woman growing up in a family of Russian immigrants in the 1910s seeks a thoroughly American life.

Yelena is the first American born to her Old Believer Russian Orthodox parents, who are building a life in a Pennsylvania Appalachian town. This town, in the first decades of the 20th century, is filled with Russian transplants and a new church with a dome. Here, boys quit grade school for the coal mines and girls are married off at fourteen. The young pair up, give birth to more babies than they can feed, and make shaky starts in their new world. However, Yelena craves a different path. Will she find her happy American ending or will a dreaded Russian ending be her fate?

In this immersive novel, Zuravleff weaves Russian fairy tales and fables into a family saga within the storied American landscape. The challenges facing immigrants--and the fragility of citizenship--are just as unsettling and surprising today as they were 100 years ago. American Ending is a poignant reminder that everything that is happening in America has already happened.

Mary Kay Zuravleff is the award-winning author of American Ending, inspired by all four of her grandparents, Russian Orthodox Old Believers who lived in the Appalachian mining town of Marianna, Pennsylvania, and made their way to Erie. Her third novel, Man Alive!, was a Washington Post Notable Book, and she is the winner of the American Academy’s Rosenthal Award and a multiple recipient of the DC Artist Fellowship. Born in Syracuse, raised in Oklahoma City, and educated in Houston and Baltimore, she lives in Washington, DC.