Tuesday, November 15, 2011

The Silence of Trees by Valya Dudycz Lupescu

I have no recollection how I came to purchase this book for my Kindle.  My guess is it was on special at Amazon one day while I was browsing.  Based on the charges to my credit card this month, that is the most likely scenario.  You see, the Kindle has made buying a book even easier than shopping in the bookstore. One click and I instantly have something new to read.  I still have a backlog of unread novels, the difference is they are conveniently stored in the confines of my reading device and no longer consume shelf space or kill any trees.

I'm glad I took a chance on an unfamiliar book by an unknown author.  The Silence of Tree is a wonderful story that spans the life of Nadya.  As a teenage girl in the Ukraine, Nadya longs to know her future from a gypsy fortune teller.  She sneaks out of bed in the middle of the night and heads deep into the forest.  When she returns home she finds the house on fire and her family missing. From this point forward, Nadya's life follows the gypsy's prediction for her.

Fast forwarding fifty years, Nadya's story of war and loss is told through flashbacks as she tries to come to grips with the secrets she's kept all this time.  She's tried to instill the ways and customs of the Ukraine in her children.  It's difficult for her to accept their modern, American lives.  She's visited often by spirits from her past.

Nadya was always looking for a message but what struck me was the message I found for myself.  She met a soldier in a grove of linden trees near the DP camp she spent time in during the war.  And she spoke of the word for faith in Ukrainian, vira.  I've written a novel about a linden tree while living here in Viera, a town named after the Slovak word for faith.  I think it's probably time to dust that manuscript off and turn it into something special.

The Silence of Trees may be on sale in the Kindle store but it's worth every penny and more to read the heartfelt and emotional story of the ability of love to heal us all.

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