Finalist for the 2019 Whistler Independent Book Awards, sponsored by the Writers Union of Canada. Semi-finalist for the 2019 Kindle Book Awards in the Literary Fiction category, In this family saga, love and loss are bound together by a country always at war. In 1915, Lukia Mazurets, a Ukrainian farmwife, delivers her eighth child while her husband is serving in the Tsar’s army. Soon after, she … husband is serving in the Tsar’s army. Soon after, she and her children are forced to flee the invading Germans. Over the next fourteen years, Lukia must rely on her wits and faith to survive life in a refugee camp, the ravages of a typhus epidemic, the Bolshevik revolution, unimaginable losses, and one daughter’s forbidden love.
Sunflowers Under Fire is a heartbreakingly intimate novel that illuminates the strength of the human spirit. Based on the true stories of her grandmother’s ordeals, author Diana Stevan captures the voices of those who had little say in a country that is still being fought over.
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A fictionalization based upon the author’s grandmother’s history in the Ukraine that tear at the heartstrings. This story will hook you and you’ll cheer Lukia’s every success and mourn her losses. This is a fabulous, but emotional read.
This novel is based on Stevan’s grandmother, Lukia. The entire book broke my heart. It may not be for you if you want a light story. This story is full of devastation, but it is also very beautiful. While it is not easy to get through because it is such an emotional story, I highly recommend grabbing a copy.
There are not enough adjectives to describe this book!
This book is not my normal read but I decide to try it. It is wonderfully written and very hard to put down. The story is based on the life of the authors family living in the Ukraine starting in 1915. It follows them thru having their husband/father fighting for Tsarist Russia, loosing everything and relocating to a refugee camp, rebuilding under Bolsheviks and Pols all the while trying to survive and keep their family together. It’s a story of survival, heartbreak, and endurance of human spirit. Keep a box of tissues handy, you will need them! I hope Ms Stevan will consider writing the continuation of this story so we can follow Lukia on the rest of her journey.
I received an ARC. This is my honest review.
Sunflowers Under Fire – This is such an interesting story. Starting in 1915, with the war entering the Ukraine, a family separated from the father, a soldier, must endure the hardship of leaving their burning home, ripen crops in the fields and a newborn to escape the fighting as ordered by their government. This is a must read for anyone who wants communism. While the Romanovs were not good leaders, their destruction and Lenin’s takeover of Russia made life worse for the peasants, who did not have it good before communism.
It is a well written story, full of heartbreak and sorrows, but also determination, courage and love. Following the journey of Lukia and her family kept me immersed in their story and made it difficult to put the book down. I wish there were more books in this genre, or any genre, that are so well written, historically accurate and remind us of our pasts and what we should be remembering to keep our present and our children’s futures free. Keep the Kleenex box handy for the heart-wrenching parts. I contacted the author to review her books. 5*
Blue Nightgown – This is my first read by this author and I did not know what to expect. I like and dislike the story. It is well written and moves at good pace, which I like. There was too much emphasis on the sex: awakenings; beliefs; morals, which I did not expect; clueless about the book. It was sad that her marriage suffered sexually since the couple did not communicate, which sex was not discussed back then. The story is interesting, although personally, I do not find any differences between the modern woman of today and all the past modern women. We just have social media to muck up things badly between the sexes and create an intolerant and prejudice herd mentality against men and a skewed definition of feminism.
Set in the 50s, the story goes back to the Dirty Thirties and the lessons learned and life during the Great Depression. Learning about Anna’s life was interesting and I enjoyed visiting the past through another person’s eyes. Especially interesting since she was not born in the US and the story blended the past with beliefs of the times and another culture. I contacted the author to review her books. 4*
Even before I began to read this, I was so impressed by what Diana Stevan has done – this is the first part of a partially fictionalised biography of her grandmother, Lukia Mazurets, who Stevan knew as a young child. In the notes at the back, she writes that her mother told her the story of their lives, and she pieced the rest together by extensive research of the history of that place and time. The research is evident throughout, without seeming intrusive; the customs and daily toils of such resilient peoples’ lives were fascinating to read about. Also most interesting was the effect of the political situation, from WW1 to 1929, and how little the peasants actually knew; all news about events elsewhere in the country came via word of mouth. Aside from this, the nature of Lukia’s incredibly hard life, with so much tragedy, meant that events happening thousands of miles away were not her immediate concern.
The novel begins in 1915, with her husband going off to fight for the Tsar just as Lukia has given birth to a sixth child – Stevan’s mother. The story is simply written, very readable, and I flew through the first half. During the last third, I sometimes felt that events were whizzed through too fast, and the storytelling became a little too simplistic, as if she was racing to the end. Now and again I would have liked a little more depth and detail, and did consider that there might be an excess of material for one novel.
In itself this is a marvellous book to have written, and I imagine it is greatly treasured by Stevan’s family, but it also stands up as commendable piece of historical fiction about the lives of the common people of a country about which I knew little. I have the sequel, and look forward to finding out what happens next.
Having read other work by this writer, I knew she was a skilled storyteller, with an eye for detail and the ability to draw readers in with compelling characters and page-turning plots.
SUNFLOWERS UNDER FIRE, however, takes her outside the parameters of fiction with a story based largely on the life of her grandmother, Lukia Mazurets, set in the backdrop of Ukraine history during the early 20th century. Bombarded with seemingly endless battles over who would rule that part of the world, with epidemics and revolutions impacting the lives of both everyday people and tsars alike, Lukia’s story is one of endurance, resilience, and unavoidable heartache, and Stevans honors her grandmother by telling it with tremendous care and compassion.
Beginning in 1915, with the birth of Lukia’s eighth child, the girl who would ultimately become the author’s mother, we follow the brutal war-torn journey of this large, loving family over several decades. Replete with the many traditions, foods, customs, and costumes of the time and place (with a handy glossary at the book’s end to assist in sorting out the names!), the story imparts a rich, evocative view of everyday life, with its notable joys and celebrations as well as the relentless hardships, endured not only by this family, but those in their circle.
That relentless is sometimes overwhelming, as one tragedy piles on top of another, but ultimately the take-away is the courage, strength, and devotion of the woman at the center of the story.
A loving tribute to a beloved grandmother, Stevans succeeds in making a page-turner of her family history, where even the smallest, most mundane, of details contributes to the suspense of following the journey of a simple but essential life.