b. neil shaw

A reliable historical account is a recitation of past truths and an important guide to living life in the present. A study of history enables future generations to avoid the pitfalls experienced by those who have lived before. This is a historical novel based in part on a true story about a Jewish familys quest to escape oppression in Ukraine in the early twentieth century. The story traces the virulent anti-Semitism against the Jewish people in Ukraine and their need to escape from the darkness of a tsarist autocracy. In the guise of offering more freedoms to a downtrodden people, the tsarist regime was overthrown in a revolution led by the Marxist dictatorship of Lenin and then Stalin. That dictatorship became even more oppressive than the heavy hand of the tsar. The Jewish family became separated from the father when he escaped to the United States with the intent of the family joining him within months. Then the Great War closed all the doors for escape, and for almost eight years, a mother and her three young children lived through the horrors of world war, revolution, civil war, and communist dictatorship behind what became known as the Iron Curtain. The story culminates in the escape and ultimate reunion of the family with the father in the land of the free, the United States of America.