The Steppes are the colour of sepia : a Mennonite memoir / Connie Braun.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Braun, Connie, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Letkemann family.

Mennonites--Ukraine--Social conditions--20th century.

Mennonites.

Mennonites--Soviet Union--Social conditions--20th century.

World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, Ukrainian.

World War, 1939-1945.

Mennonites--Canada--History--20th century.

Mennonites--Canada--Biography.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (257 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Distribution:

Beaconsfield, Quebec : Canadian Electronic Library, 2014.

Place of Publication:

Vancouver [British Columbia] : Ronsdale Press, [2008]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Braun invites the reader to embark on a journey that traces the paths of ancestral memory over the steppes of the Russian empire to the valleys of Canada's Fraser River. Her narrative continues where Sandra Birdsell's historical fiction Russlander left off - back to the catastrophic events of twentieth-century Europe. Braun intimately ushers us into the life of one extended Mennonite family, and in particular the life of her father and grandfather, living under the terror of Stalin, and later, under the military expansion of Hitler's Nazi Lebensraum in the Ukraine. In the vein of Janice Kulyk Keefer's memoir Honey and Ashes: A Story of Family and Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces , Braun gives voice to the narrative of dispossession. In a memoir that is historically faithful to documents, letters, old photographs and personal testimony, Braun offers a lyrical second-generation witness to her family members and to all other Canadians who have suffered displacement in history's disasters, and whose obscure stories must be told. In doing so, she honours the spirit of resilience embodied by the refugees who have created and transformed Canadian society.

Contents:

Introduction: Promised Land

Part I: Russia : A Pastor's Record of Repression. 1. Clues from a Canadian Childhood

2. The Story of Jakob

3. Childhood's Time

Part II World War II : A Boy's Recollection of Survival. 1941 to 1943 : A Time of Survival

5. The Great Trek Begins

6. Arriving at 1945

7. Austria, 1945 to 1947

Afterword.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 235-238) and index.

ISBN:

1-55380-265-9

OCLC:

872601009