This is a lovely multigenerational memoir. The author is the daughter and granddaughter of Latvian refugees who fled their home country at the end of WWII, and she returns to Latvia after her the death of the grandmother who raised her to learn more about the country and her family’s stories. Much of the book traces the lives of her grandmother – raised on a farm she would forever idealize, before going to school, moving to the city, and ultimately fleeing across war-torn Europe with her two young children, not knowing whether her conscripted husband was dead or alive – and her grandmother’s younger sister, who was trapped on the farm by the war, then deported to Siberia with her family, to finally return and pick up the pieces all over again. Separated for fifty years, the sisters both seemed to envy the other: Ausma envies the glamorous older sister who got away, while Livija, who finally lands in Tacoma, lives in the past, clinging to the Latvian community in exile and raising her granddaughter in its traditions.

It’s a lovely, thoughtful, atmospheric and emotionally rich memoir, and quite comprehensive for its length, with diversions into Latvian history recent and remote and even geological, but always centered on the family and the countryside they both love intensely and often want or need to escape. The artsiness of the writing style was a bit of a stumbling block for me in the beginning – this is definitely an MFA memoir – but by the end I felt the literary style helps distinguish the book. And I appreciated the author’s reckoning with complex topics, such as how those men, including her own grandfather, who were conscripted into the Latvian Legion – meaning they were fighting for the Nazis, but against the Soviets – should be judged. I felt throughout that the author was searching for truth and comfortable with nuance. And of course, I was especially thrilled to find a high-quality book about Latvia, a country rarely featured in literature. I recommend it.

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I just got back from Riga (in Latvia). In a way, the trip was a success or at least seems to be so far, but in a way, it was not as much fun as the last time.

The weather was as good as could be expected for December, that is completely calm, which made sure I didn't get seasick and that's always good.

Mum came along on this trip which, to be honest wasn't all that much fun for us. In her defense I have to say that she was in pain (she's twisted her ankle) and had a bad cough (which she still does). But she kept complaining about everything, including the food, which my sister and I quite liked. We are quite thrilled that there was so much that happened to be vegan.

Something was wrong with the subway in Stockholm, but that didn't affect us very much, because we were on a bus (once we found a way of buying tickets), but so many people chose to go by bus instead of by subway which made it a bit crowded. Plus for some reason, some of the bus stops were just canceled (if that's the word - a decision was made to just ignore them and people had to walk a lot further).

On the train, on the way back, we saw a cute little boy. He showed me how to open a door (which was very nice of him). That door had almost squeezed me moments earlier and a moment later, it almost crushed my hand. Fortunately, there was a much older guy (thirties maybe) who knew of a switch that could keep the door open for much longer):

We also ran into two nice older ladies who talked to us on the bus from the ferry terminal to the Central Station and two quite nice younger women who also talked to us while we were waiting or on the train.

To end the evening, we also had a bit of adult entertainment at the railway station while waiting for the bus back to the house. I had no trouble ignoring those high school kids, but it was quite embarrassing to sit next to my mum while they were up to their antics.