Pre-Owned Through the Burning Steppe: A Wartime Memoir (Hardcover) 1573221538 9781573221535

Through the eyes of a young girl comes this wartime memoir--an unforgettable, timeless story of courage, dignity, and a mother's love.

When the Germans laid siege to Leningrad in 1942, Elena Kozhina, then a child of nine, fled with her mother to a Cossack village in the heart of the Russian Steppe, where they hid in dangerous proximity to nearby occupying troops. Her account of the years until their liberation is a singularly compelling story of exile and survival, of a mother's courage and dignity, and a young girl's infinitely poignant education in the sorrows of war.

Offered reluctant shelter by the Cossacks who viewed the cosmopolitan Leningraders with only slightly less suspicion than the Nazi soldiers who terrorized their villages en route to the front, Kozhina and her mother forged an uneasy truce with the locals as they tried to convert a ramshackle garden shed into a habitable home. Through her simple yet remarkable acts of kindness and bravery, her mother managed to offset the horror and struggle of their wartime lives and instill in those around her a lasting appreciation for her enduring humanity and courage.

As affecting as an historical novel, Elena Kozhina's jewel of a memoir is poised to become a classic of the genre. Already drawing comparison to similar works by Tolstoy and Gorky, Through the Burning Steppe reveals a natural writer of unerring grace.