Night Train to Odessa

Anthropologist and children’s book author Grow’s adult debut is based on the recollections of her aunt who lived in Odessa while the Russian Empire was imploding and the Russian Revolution was rising. In autumn 1919, widow Elvira boards a train for Odessa with her two children to escape the war between the White and Red Armies. The crush of evacuees tears the youngsters from her hands. For two years, she searches for them in Odessa, where she has found a tenement home and a seamstress job. She falls in with Michail, a talented puppetmaker, and his friends, one of whom winkles out a trace of her children. No happy ending here—the children have been swept into the underworld. Elvira and Michail are drawn into the murderous spaces where Bolsheviks become criminals to earn big rubles. With disorder all around, the distractions of puppet shows, antics of street children, and a soupçon of French fashion contribute a welcome change of pace to the harsh reality of a city near collapse. Some O. Henry–style pivots appear infrequently, but the final one is memorable.