Guest post from Susan Sherman on Reading the Past

"For years I wanted to write my grandmother’s story. It was a natural for a novel: a young Jewish woman and her two children caught in Ukraine at the beginning of World War I, her desperate struggle to stay alive through the Russian Revolution and the civil war that followed, and her eventual escape across Ukraine to Poland. Yes, it was daunting to write about Russia; to become intimate with Ukraine during that period; to know what if felt like to live through those seminal events, especially as a Jew living in the Pale. I thought that if I were ever going to write this story, I’d better get on with it. My father and his one remaining brother were getting on. Time was running out. Since my grandmother didn’t leave a diary or letters or any other record, only they had the story or so I thought."To read Susan's guest post in full, click here: readingthepast.blogspot.com