American Ending
By Mary Kay Zuravleff
A woman growing up in a family of Russian immigrants in the 1910s seeks a thoroughly American life.
Yelena is the first American born to her Old Believer Russian Orthodox parents, who left two older daughters behind to build a life in a Pennsylvania Appalachian town. This town, in the first decades of the 20th century, is filled with Russian transplants and a new church with a dome. Here, boys quit grade school for the coal mines and girls are married off at fourteen. The young pair up, give birth to more babies than they can feed, and make shaky starts in their new world. But Yelena, mindful of the thoroughly American life she craves, puts off all suitors. Through a chain of fateful meetings, she is gradually wooed by the attentive but sickly Viktor Gomelekoff, born in her parents’ hometown, who seems to share her yearnings. When she discovers what choosing Viktor has cost her, her life is forever changed. Will she find her happy American ending or will a dreaded Russian ending be her fate?
The challenges facing immigrants—and the fragility of citizenship—are just as unsettling and surprising today as they were one hundred years ago. American Ending is a poignant reminder that everything that is happening in America has already happened.
“It’s small acts of inventiveness, generosity, and love that keep individuals going when hard times close in. This is the wisdom and warmth of American Ending, which resurrects a community of immigrants from a century ago in magical, living detail to tell a story that rings true in the present.”—Oprah Daily
“How I loved spending time with Yelena in her vivid, terrible and—most astonishingly—joyous time and place. Mary Kay Zuravleff’s novel manages to capture all the struggle and the grief endured by this particular, unsung set of immigrants without ever veering into caricature or melodrama. In Yelena’s clear-eyed telling, in her honesty and love, every painful obstacle to attaining that intractable American promise of a better life is made unique—wholly fresh and achingly believable. Oh, and the food! Gorgeous.”—Alice McDermott, author of The Ninth Hour and Charming Billy
Writer Desiree Cooper talks about Mary Kay Zuravleff’s new book, American Ending.
Mary Kay Zuravleff is the award-winning author of American Ending, inspired by all four of her grandparents, Russian Orthodox Old Believers who lived in the Appalachian mining town of Marianna, Pennsylvania, and made their way to Erie. Her third novel, Man Alive!, was a Washington Post Notable Book, and she is the winner of the American Academy’s Rosenthal Award and a multiple recipient of the DC Artist Fellowship. Born in Syracuse, raised in Oklahoma City, and educated in Houston and Baltimore, she lives in Washington, DC. www.americanending.net
