(Audio) Book Review: Away from the Dead by David Bergen

Away from the Dead follows a handful of characters through several years of life in early-20th century Ukraine. Lehn is a young man when he falls in love with Katka, changing the course of his life and involving him with the complicated history of her extended family, including Katka’s uncle, a wealthy Mennonite landowner. Unrest seems to dominate the landscape as various factions rise to power and struggle against one another. But love and loyalty are also the primary features of Lehn’s life.

This is a difficult plot to describe because it moves over quite a number of years and between several characters. Lehn might be described as the main character since we follow him for the longest time. However, the story dives deep with other characters and often leaves Lehn behind for long stretches. We meet Inna, a peasant girl raised in the wealthy Martens home until they cast her out. Her brother Sablin who shows loyalty in unexpected ways. So perhaps, really, this is a story about ordinary people living in extraordinary times. The characters we follow are not necessarily impoverished nor are they the wealthy and powerful that are struck down when revolution grows in nearby Russia. They are the peripheral characters to the central unrest – the ones who suffer and survive in the best ways they know how as violence threatens to diminish humanity.

There is a lot of sweetness to this book and a lot that was hard to read (or listen to in my case). Bergen doesn’t delve much into the history or politics of the time but expects his reader to understand the basics of the Russian revolution and Russia’s role in the Ukraine in the early 20th century. Lehn is a bookseller and books and literature are a touchstone throughout the novel with plenty of references to the great Russian writers, particularly Chekhov, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky.