Life on the run One family's search for peace in war-torn Ukraine

An affecting work from a Ukrainian writer originally from Donetsk who fled to Kyiv and reoriented his life. Maidukov, a well-known writer in Ukraine, was 66 when the Russians invaded in February 2022, living with his wife, Luba, and grown children in Kyiv. Eight years before, he and his wife were living in Donetsk. After the fracture with Russia and the Maidan revolution of 2014, the author took a cue from his son, Sergiy, to leave the "rotten" ways of Donetsk in July 2014 and move to Kyiv with Luba, thus becoming thoroughly Ukrainian despite their Russian-language family roots. Maidukov describes his break with his elderly parents, who were susceptible to Putin's propaganda about Ukraine. When the invasion occurred, the couple headed west to flee to Poland. He and Luba, along with two granddaughters, lived in hotels in various Polish towns, relying on the kindness of strangers. As the Ukrainian military battled the Russians over the course of the year, Maidukov recorded his observations, and they eventually returned to Kyiv, a disorderly, war-ravaged landscape, but essentially free. "In Ukraine, even bushes and trees looked different," writes the author. "Unshorn and unkempt, they grew up disorderly and freely. Indeed, it was symbolic of the very nature of Ukraine--freedom-seeking, desiring, defiant, willful, hard to grind or polish….Russia failed to destroy the Ukrainian language and erase the national identity." As a narrator, the author is engaging and honest, and he openly shares his fears, hopes for publication, and visions for Ukraine's future. He chronicles how the public came, somewhat reluctantly, to regard President Volodymyr Zelensky as a hero, and how the war has taken an enormous toll on the physical and mental health of both the author and his wife. A moving look at a deeply riven Russian-Ukrainian family and how they rejected Russian aggression. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.