Paper Poppies
Marianna Vekhova
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2005 Cladach Publishing
ISBN: 0975961918

Memoirs of a crippled WWII Russian orphan's search for God.

Marianna Vekhova recounts her search for Truth & Hope as she came of age amid the influences of Soviet atheism, the ascendancy of natural sciene, the folklore & superstitions of the Russian people, the Jewish traditions of her mother's family, & the Orthodox traditions of her father's family.

At the outset of Paper Poppies, Marianna Vekhova ponders on this thing we call death, after all, she's reliving memories of a childhood as affected by death as a hive of bees is affected by an orchard of blossoming trees. Everywhere she looks, death is visiting. First, it was her mother, then her father & then one of her grandmothers. & when the War (II) began, she was already in Siberia in a tuberculosis sanitorium for women of all faiths, some even true believers of the Marx/Stalin doctrine of no religion, no imagination, no faith, nothing. Even so, Marianna has a vivid world in her mind, & as the only child there, a surfeit of attention & little gifts.

Into her pain-racked seven-year-old life, strapped to her bed, encased in a plaster corset, with hands bound so she won't chew on them when the pain of the TB eating away her vertebrae gets too much, comes an equally damaged old woman who whispers the secrets to overcoming the pain. Child that she is, Marianna finds succor in repeating & examining the meaning of each word. It is The Lord's Prayer.

With the War finally ended, Marianna's aunt manages to find her niece & brings her back to Moscow where she will spend more years, at last healing, in another sanatorium, where she must learn what it is to live among children.

In time Marianna Vekhova does walk out into the world albeit on crutches, to travel north to live with her mother's mother who has kept her daughter's journals, photos & letters, & where Marianna will at last know family, love & connection.

& in the end, the call of faith draws her to an Orthodox Church where she becomes baptized, & one with Jesus. Her descriptions of her blossoming faith are deeply moving.

Paper Poppies is a magical memoir, told in snapshots of memories & snatches of old folktales, which become a lyrical introduction to this child's mind. Be willing to let go of your fluency in English, & flow with the author's sense of storytelling. This is by no means a cloying, sentimental “why me?” rendering of a hard life, rather it is filled with death & dying, recountings of desperate times & resources, yet through all, like sunbeams through storm clouds, memories & images of the joys of life, pondering of Big Thoughts & of healers & faith, glow in a heartwarming wealth.

A child of war myself, & having spent some years of my own childhood encaged in plaster of Paris from my ankles to my hips, & survived rheumatic fever & TB, I have known what it was like to linger in hospital wards, make friends & foes there. & I too was also able to walk away to my own life. Some of those whom I left behind were never to know that freedom. So, while Paper Poppies has been a hard memoir to read, it has also been an immensely healing one.

& how the book got its name? One time the children struggle to make paper poppies to offer in a ceremony & song to a local military commander standing under the obligatory portrait of Joseph Stalin.

Paper Poppies is a fascinating glimpse behind the Iron Curtain to the ordinary lives of a Germanic/ Jewish/ Russian family caught up in terrible times, & how it all affected one little girl. It is also a homage to the enduring strength of the women of Russia, & faith of the spirit.

Marianna Vekhova is a graduate of Moscow State University, School of Journalism. She has been an editor for a children's publishing house & has written scripts for children's radio & television shows. She also volunteered with street children at a local mission, where she created a drama workshop & shared her faith in Jesus. She is now a freelance writer, creating religious publications for the Russian Orthodox Church Youth Movement. She lives in Moscow with her husband, & has a grown daughter & grandchildren.
(04/09/06)

Rebecca