Shandi Mitchell

A harrowing story of a Ukrainian family who escaped Stalin’s regime to live as homesteading farmers in northern Alberta in 1938. Life was so difficult it’s hard to imagine that it could have been an improvement on what went before. It’s a mesmerizing story written so tenderly that the reader comes to know each of the family closely.

I have to hand it to the immigrants who farmed in this part of Alberta. By identifying the area from towns Mitchell mentioned, I can say I know the area well and can testify to the ground filled with rocks and bogs, and of the fire hazard and unbelievably harsh winters. Some of those log cabins are still standing, empty and forlorn, yet creating a picture in the imagination of life in the past.… (altro)

I've read half of this book, and I have no interest in continuing.
Shandi Mitchell is a competent enough writer, but I'm finding this book totally unengaging. I don't care for or about any of the characters, and I can't help but feel I've heard this story many times before (and told much better - think Steinbeck). Everything is just a bit too familiar, too predictable, too cloying. It's a sad story, and that's the kind of book that often draws me in, and mercifully it's not sentimental or pathetic. But something is missing here - that burst of originality, those moments that pull a reader in and won't let him go no matter what, those phrases and breathtaking uses of language that make a reader say: "Wow!"… (altro)