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A review by saareman
The Last Secret: A Novel by Maia Caron
4.0
Epic Ukrainian-Canadian Saga
Review of the Doubleday Canada paperback, audiobook & eBook (to be published September 24, 2024) read via a NetGalley Kindle ARC (downloaded August 22, 2024).
Two women are trapped in figurative prisons not of their own making. There are secrets upon secrets which are either hidden or lost and which they both seek to uncover. All will be revealed in the end, but it will take a journey across time from 1944's WW2 battlegrounds in Ukraine to the 1972 shores of Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, Canada before the last secret is unveiled.
In 1944, Savka Ivanets is forced from her home on a mission for the Ukrainian Underground resistance by her husband Marko, who is embedded with the Waffen SS on orders from the independence movement leaders who hope to build a future Ukrainian Army to resist both German and Russian invaders. She falls into the hands of the Russian NKVD Secret Police who kidnap her son Taras to hold as a means to force her to do their bidding. Her journey to find her son will take her to Poland, to England and finally to Canada. But agents of the now Russian KGB follow her at every turn.
In 1972, reclusive painter Jeannie Esterhazy is kept as a virtual prisoner in her aunt's home of Salt Spring Island. Her caregiver is not the benign nurse that she may first appear to be. Jeannie is regularly kept drugged and complacent, but is still capable of producing a regular output of paintings. Jeannie is the survivor of a burn incident in her youth but also of a traumatic incident when she was recovering in hospital in 1959. Then one day a man appears on the island asking questions about the past. The scene is set for a final confrontation where the secrets from both 1944 and 1959 will be revealed at last.
Maia Caron has produced an epic historical fiction which reveals the further back history of the struggles for Ukrainian independence which are still being fought for during the current Russian invasion and terror. Caron's research on the historical background was quite extensive and the story does not shy away from the horrors that otherwise innocent people must endure in vicious conflicts. Various characters were inspired by actual real-life people and author Caron provides some of that background in her concluding Author's Note.
My thanks to the author, the publisher Doubleday Canada and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this preview ARC, in exchange for which I provide this honest review.
Trivia and Link
Author Maia Caron is of Métis heritage and is also the author of [b:Song of Batoche|34694722|Song of Batoche|Maia Caron|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1498061694l/34694722._SX50_.jpg|55873735] (2017) which is a historical fiction about Louis Riel and the North-West Rebellion.
Review of the Doubleday Canada paperback, audiobook & eBook (to be published September 24, 2024) read via a NetGalley Kindle ARC (downloaded August 22, 2024).
Two women are trapped in figurative prisons not of their own making. There are secrets upon secrets which are either hidden or lost and which they both seek to uncover. All will be revealed in the end, but it will take a journey across time from 1944's WW2 battlegrounds in Ukraine to the 1972 shores of Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, Canada before the last secret is unveiled.
In 1944, Savka Ivanets is forced from her home on a mission for the Ukrainian Underground resistance by her husband Marko, who is embedded with the Waffen SS on orders from the independence movement leaders who hope to build a future Ukrainian Army to resist both German and Russian invaders. She falls into the hands of the Russian NKVD Secret Police who kidnap her son Taras to hold as a means to force her to do their bidding. Her journey to find her son will take her to Poland, to England and finally to Canada. But agents of the now Russian KGB follow her at every turn.
In 1972, reclusive painter Jeannie Esterhazy is kept as a virtual prisoner in her aunt's home of Salt Spring Island. Her caregiver is not the benign nurse that she may first appear to be. Jeannie is regularly kept drugged and complacent, but is still capable of producing a regular output of paintings. Jeannie is the survivor of a burn incident in her youth but also of a traumatic incident when she was recovering in hospital in 1959. Then one day a man appears on the island asking questions about the past. The scene is set for a final confrontation where the secrets from both 1944 and 1959 will be revealed at last.
Maia Caron has produced an epic historical fiction which reveals the further back history of the struggles for Ukrainian independence which are still being fought for during the current Russian invasion and terror. Caron's research on the historical background was quite extensive and the story does not shy away from the horrors that otherwise innocent people must endure in vicious conflicts. Various characters were inspired by actual real-life people and author Caron provides some of that background in her concluding Author's Note.
My thanks to the author, the publisher Doubleday Canada and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this preview ARC, in exchange for which I provide this honest review.
Trivia and Link
Author Maia Caron is of Métis heritage and is also the author of [b:Song of Batoche|34694722|Song of Batoche|Maia Caron|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1498061694l/34694722._SX50_.jpg|55873735] (2017) which is a historical fiction about Louis Riel and the North-West Rebellion.