Reeds in the Wind

"Reeds in the Wind" takes you along on the vertiginous journey of a mother with her two children whose lives were suddenly turned upside down by two forces of evil, threatening to exterminate millions of people with no relation and understanding of the dark minds behind this tragedy.From a somewhat uneventful life under the Soviet regime, the breadbasket of Ukraine became the overlapping target of both Stalin and Hitler and that is where and when it all begins to unravel.The City of Kharkov is where the author was born. Nikita Kusnezov describes his youth growing up under communism and how alarming events started to replace the daily routine, virtually exposing the reader to his hands-on experience as the situation keeps deteriorating.To follow the sometimes miraculous escapes throughout Eastern Europe, during twelve years of being constantly uprooted,makes for a gut wrenching reading.This odyssey of human endurance and survival takes place among the turmoil of World War II as the unfolding background is kept in sight by the author and referred to methodically.This autobiography is only one more testimony of the millions of victims who fell silent and to whom Timothy Snyder refers in his "Bloodlands".Cover PaintingMARSH IN A FOREST, ca. 1665by Jacob Van Ruysdael (1628-1682)Acquired by Catherine the Great between 1763-1774,for the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia.