“In Kalyna Clark has created an engaging protagonist, together with a plot that grabs and holds the reader’s attention. Using family and community history, Clark shines the light of fiction on a period when hundreds of Ukrainians, along with other ethnic groups, were sent into forced labor camps, often leaving wives and children on farms recently hacked out of wilderness. This is a timely novel coming as it does when the propaganda of fear is again being used to dehumanize people who can be identified as Other.”

“Possession, in its many forms, weaves through this story about Wasyl and Katja, a young couple fleeing occupied Ukraine to Edna-Star, Alberta. Passionately written, Kalyna explores the physical possession of the prairies and the prairie’s possession of Wasyl and Katja. Separation, betrayal, community and family are part of the history of a family whose strongest desire is to be allowed to fully embrace their new Canadian life on the prairies.Clark writes her characters with a hopeful heart and provides them the capacity to forgive, despite atrocities endured.”