The Rings of My Tree: A Latvian Woman's Journey

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Summary: The Rings of My Tree
Review: I did not want this book to end. In reading it, it brought me through every experience with her. It sounded just like the stories she told me over her fence as we were neighbors for eight years and have contiued to be friends for the past 18 yrs.
It made me love her even more!

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Summary: The Rings of My Tree
Review: My mother escaped from Latvia in 1944. Her path to freedom, through Poland, Berlin, and Hanau, was very much like that described so well in this book. This book tells a compelling story of Mirdza. It is a must read for anyone who is interested in the Baltics, or in what life was like as a refugee during WW II. It is down to earth, highly readable, and heart warming. Once you start reading it, you can't put this book down. This book also is inspiring when life seems hard.

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Summary: And My Family Tree Also...
Review: The monsters and beasts in my childhood bedtime stories were not imaginary. They were flesh and blood and in human form, and usually they wore the uniforms of the Red Army. They marched in my parents' memories, relentless and cruel, driving them from their homes in Latvia during World War II. My parents were refugees, displaced to camps in Germany in the 1940's while awaiting sponsors for their immigration to the United States. Although I was born in the States, I have known two homes, two cultures, two languages, two histories, and the stories on which I was raised have become a part of my ethnic inheritance.

Reading Jane E. Cunningham's book about another Latvian woman's personal journey as a refugee from Latvia to the United States during the war was like hearing the stories of my parents all over again. What amazed me, however, were the accuracy of perception and a to-the-core understanding of an experience the author could not have shared. Cunningham, after all, is not Latvian. She is an Irish-American living in Connecticut, a teacher, and no closer to the Latvian experience than, well, crossing the street, as it turned out. For 45 years, Cunningham has known and befriended her neighbor, Mirdza Vaselnieks Labrencis. Now a woman in her mid-eighties, Mirdza has shared her stories about her home in Latvia and her journey to America with her most attentive neighbor, resulting in this slender but powerful book. Cunningham has even written it as a first-person account-a daring move, but one at which she was surprisingly successful. In nearly every detail and perception, the story is Mirdza's. It is also the story of most all Latvian refugees.

To survive-"where there is life, there is hope"-Mirdza undergoes a psychological shifting in her spirit and in her psyche. "Inside my still anesthetized cocoon, the soul of the self is changing. This forced-by-war metamorphosis was a lonely place to be, and yet it seemed to be a place of unconscious, unfolding change that surfaced through a new, foreign determination that surprised me. Survival is a funny thing... tied to self-respect. The greedy monster ministers of war had separated my family, killed some of my friends, issued a warrant for my life, bombed my house... raped and pillaged my country and took away the normal use of my left side... the caterpillar in my mind was losing its slow-crawling legs and I have no idea when the wings of courage developed, but there was a flapping inside of me." (pgs. 31-32)

Pushed to its limits, human nature shows its true colors and true fiber. A frightened girl emerges a strong, determined young woman, doing what she must to survive and to establish some semblance of a new life for herself. It is not in her nature to be bold, Cunningham writes of her heroine, nor is it the nature of a nation to be subjected to the depravity of war. Those who cannot adapt-die. Those who find wings and tap into a core wisdom of resilience-live. Mirdza makes a decision to live.

To survive one does what one must, sometimes shutting off the mind, other times shutting off the heart. When required, both are called back into action. Cunningham writes of Mirdza's life in German refugee camps with a compassionate honesty, never glossing over Mirdza's very human moments of weakness, but letting her moments of personal heroism quietly shine in their own illumination.

Cunningham's account of a story so far, surely, from her own as an Irish-American living in Connecticut is testimony of the ability to bridge two cultures and two very different perspectives on life to form very human bonds of friendship. This slender volume is highly recommended for anyone willing to take a moment to appreciate what makes us all different... and what makes us all the same.

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Summary: A gripping story
Review: There are very few works in English descrbing the Latvian displaced-person (DP) experience. This a VERY GOOD one. A terrifying story of what really happens in war and its aftermath, and one young woman's response to it. Whether your thoughts are with the Latvians of 50 yrs ago or with today's refugees in war-torn areas, this is a page-turner. And because Agate Nesaule recommends it (above), you KNOW you are in good company. This story could have died when its 82-yr-old subject will, but instead it will live on, thanks to this book, unlike those of so many others. This is an important contribution and a GREAT, INSPIRING READ, and historically accurate too.