海角大神

Inara Verzemnieks grew up in the US, yet immersed in stories of the Latvian home her聽grandmother had left behind after World War II.

Summers were spent at a cultural camp where only Latvian was spoken,聽where the children and grandchildren of refugees learned folk dancing聽and "oral histories of the proper mounding of hay, instruction in the聽selection of wildflowers appropriate to the braided crowns worn by聽maidens on midsummer鈥檚 night."

After the death of her grandparents, who had chiefly raised her,聽Verzemnieks repeatedly visited the surviving branches of her family in聽that lost homeland 鈥渨here landscape was lineage.鈥� In her elegiac new聽book, Among The Living and The Dead, she describes how she hoped the聽faraway travels would restore her grandmother to her 鈥渋n the old聽stories鈥� that still existed there.

"In the region of Latvia where my grandmother was raised, there are聽people who believe even to this day that the right words spoken in the聽right combination are a way of resurrecting what has been lost. Or, as聽an old man asked me: Did I know that there were times when words could聽become more than words?" she wrote.

Ultimately, what she found was even broader: the meaning of home, the聽power of stories, and the different ways survivors and their memories聽move forward.

With narratives as dreamy and nightmarish as a living Grimms鈥� fairy聽tale, the book is a family biography of her grandmother and聽great-aunt. The personal story is seamlessly backed by the author鈥檚聽deep research, from scholarly papers to records found in "a file in an聽unmarked warehouse located at the end of an unpaved service road in聽Riga."

Traveling to her grandmother鈥檚 hometown, Verzemnieks explains how it聽was a crossroads for armies throughout the centuries, from Vikings to聽SS troops. Paths in and out of the region, she wrote, were simply聽known as "war roads."

The story outline that she knows from the start is how her聽grandmother, Livija, escaped from Russian troops when living in the聽Latvian capital while her husband was conscripted into battle. For two聽years, registered as a displaced person with their children in聽British-occupied Germany, Livija thought her husband was dead. The聽couple eventually reunited and resettled in America, but it took years聽for her family in Latvia to learn they had survived.

The mirroring story, which Verzemnieks slowly coaxes out through her聽travels, is of her grandmother鈥檚 sister, Ausma, who once saw Livija as聽"her template for what it is to grow up." Ausma helps the family聽survive after Livija has fled; first on their rural farm, then later聽in the Siberian camp where they are exiled.

"You should know that your grandmother鈥檚 stories aren鈥檛 my stories,"聽Ausma tells her great-niece at their first meeting. Each sister聽desperately needed the other after their paths forked, yet had to聽forge onward, apart.

The atrocities Verzemnieks describes are broadly familiar to any聽reader of wartime history: A dead newborn tossed from a train, Jewish聽congregants trapped in a burning synagogue, townsmen securing plastic聽sheeting to basement walls 鈥渢o catch the anticipated sprays of blood."聽The stories gain added chill when seen through the family鈥檚 personal聽lens, and Verzemnieks adds context to the big-picture onslaught, as聽when discussing the repeated stories told about people who were killed聽for their watches, "so that it becomes unclear whether we are talking聽about actual theft, or simply repeating a parable about the聽destruction of order, of certainty, of all previously agreed upon聽references."

For readers reluctant to take on such grim material, the author鈥檚聽arresting descriptions take in life鈥檚 redeeming loveliness as well as聽its brutality.
Through her jeweled prose, a voice sounds "like the tip of a match聽drawn across phosphorus," a woman鈥檚 eyes are compared to 鈥渢he bark of聽a madrone tree set against a clear sky,鈥� even Latvia鈥檚 national liquor聽tastes 鈥渁s if one is alternately tonguing the unfurled buds of trees,聽then their hot pitch."

Verzemnieks, who teaches creative nonfiction at the University of聽Iowa, was a 2007 Pulitzer Prize finalist for her "witty and聽perceptive" portfolio of features on an array of everyday topics at聽the Oregonian newspaper, such as the history of the maraschino cherry聽and the founding of a velvet painting museum.

In her career as a reporter, she wrote, "It is interesting to me now聽to think that I had deliberately chosen a profession where I was聽actively discouraged from ever using the word I, from ever inserting聽myself in the frame."

Here, she鈥檚 found that magical combination of history and personal聽history, with a story that she alone could tell.