Crow Stone
Crow Stone
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Author(s): Goldstone, Gabriele
ISBN No.: 9781553806653
Pages: 288
Year: 202206
Format: Trade Paper
Price: $ 26.15
Dispatch delay: Dispatched between 7 to 15 days
Status: Available

East Prussia, Germany in 1944 during the last winter of the Second World War; the story follows Katya, a worker at an ammunition factory who flees with her two sisters and thousands of other East Prussian civilians as the Third Reich begins to collapse under the weight of the Red Army; Katya is trying to reach ships on the Baltic coast but becomes separated from her sisters and forced to make a long, shameful trek to the Soviet Union, the country that destroyed her family home; Katya is forced into a labour camp, where her Russian language skills from her childhood help her avoid danger and rise to a leadership position as a starosta; a harrowing, unflinching and honest account of the life of fleeing East Prussian civilians during a time of chaos, fear and rampant death, with many plot points based firmly in reality. COMP. TITLES: Our Darkest Night, Jennifer Robson (2021, Harper Collins Canada); Tainted Amber, Gabriele Goldstone (2021, Ronsdale Press)It's especially cold and snowy, that last winter of the Second World War. With the Red Army expected to thunder through the Third Reich at any moment, a sense of doom pervades Katya's world where everyone is expected to believe in the Nazi's final victory. At the end of January, 1945, East Prussian civilians are finally given permission to flee. Having spent the war years working at an ammunition factory, Katya joins her two sisters, and thousands of others, trekking with overloaded wagons along crowded, snowy roads. They're trying to reach ships waiting along the Baltic coast. They don't make it.


Instead, Katya's separated from her sisters and forced to take a long and shameful journey back into the Soviet Union, a country that once labelled her kulak and destroyed her family home. Katya's dragged into a labour camp deep in the Ural Mountains. Here, with her Russian language skills from childhood, she's elevated to a leadership position as a starosta. It's a position fraught with danger as she navigates the two enemy worlds. Katya learns to eat crow, to find love, and to believe in herself.


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