This is the May Barnes & Noble Bookclub selection and I am leading the discussion next week.
This story is part of a trilogy of books, book 3 being in the works now. In Lilac Girls readers meet Caroline Ferriday during WWII. In Lost Roses readers get the story of her mother Eliza during WWI.
Eliza, her friend Sofya (a wealthy Russian), Sofya's sister Luba, a young poor woman named Varinka, they are our main points of view of what is happening in Russia, Paris, and the US during the Russian revolution that saw the over throwing of Tzar Nicolas (and birthed the fairytale stories about Anastasia).
It was brutal and heart wrenching. In the beginning it is striking at how willing the wealthy are to wear blinders to the suffering of those around them and to hold on to the image of Nicolas as beneficent and loving. So it isn't really all that surprising when the peasant class rises up and tries to take what they have been kept from having, food, medicine, shelter....but as happens in chaos and with no clear guidance or plan, in many places it becomes a bloodbath and doesn't better anyone. In small villages the villagers rise up and overtake the estates and often kill the estate holders, wreck the home and belongings and are left without food again before long. It is a brutal cycle. And in this background is the story of our main characters. Strong women all in their own ways.
Eliza was a real women who really opened her homes in NYC and Southampton to women who fled Russia and made it to the US. She also founded a relief society and tried to make life better for the women and children harmed by the war and revolution.
Lost Roses was an interesting and at times brutal and tense story. It brought the war and the choices people make in unusual times and the consequences of those choices into vivid pictures.
(Finished April 30, 2019)
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