The Sky Unwashed

The Sky Unwashed

From BooklistInspired by the events surrounding the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, Zabytko tells a story of tragedy and suffering experienced by a small Ukrainian village. In Starylis, Marusia Petrenko shares a tiny house with her son, Yurko, daughter-in-law, Zosia, and her two grandchildren. When Yurko returns home sick from working at the power plant, it is not long before the government forces the entire town onto buses headed to Moscow. While Yurko lies in a rundown hospital, Marusia, Zosia, and the children wait in the crowded hospital basement for word that they can go home. Tired of waiting, Zosia sneaks the children out of the hospital and onto a train to Siberia. After Yurko dies, Marusia defies the government and begins her journey back home to live out her remaining days. The strength of the novel lies in Zabytko's ability to capture the reality of everyday life, the horror of the fallout from a nuclear accident, and the power of the human spirit to survive. The only drawback is that the truth diminishes the fiction. Carolyn KubiszEarly on an April Saturday in 1986 in a farm village in Ukraine, widow Marusia Petrenko and her family awake to a day of traditional wedding preparations. Marusia bakes her famous wedding bread-a korovai-in the communal village oven to take to her neighbor's granddaughter's reception. Late that night, after all the dancing and drinking, Marusia's son Yurko leaves for his shift at the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl.In the morning, the air has a strange metallic taste. The cat is oddly listless. The priest doesn't show up for services. Yurko doesn't come home from work. Nobody know what's happened (and they won't for many days), but things have changed for the Petrenkos-forever.Inspired by true events, this unusual, unexpected novel tells how-and why-Marusia defies the Soviet government's permanent evacuation of her deeply contaminated village and returns to live out her days in the only home she's ever known. Alone in the deserted town, she struggles up into the church bell tower to ring the bells twice every day just in case someone else has returned. And they have, one by one/ In the end, five intrepid old women-the village babysi-band together for survival and to confront the Soviet officials responsible for their fate. And, in the midst of desolation, a tenacious hold on life chimes forth.Poignant and truthful and triumphant, this timeless story is about ordinary people who do more than simply "survive."From Publishers WeeklyUkrainian-American Zabytko's poignant debut novel was inspired by the true story of villagers who defied the forced evacuation of their Ukrainian town after the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in the 1980s. The narrator is septuagenarian Marusia Petrenko, a hard-working grandmother who lives with Yurko, her only son; his wife, Zosia; and their two small children, Katia and Tarasyk, in a tiny house where only a thin curtain separates Marusia's quarters from the rest of the family's. Like many of the townspeople in Starylis, Zosia and Yurko work at the nuclear power plant in nearby Chernobyl. The drama begins one spring weekend in 1986, when several of the village's men do not return home from their shifts at the plant. One by one, the people of Starylis begin to notice a strange metallic taste in the air and to suffer from itchy, watery eyes. The official word is that there has been "a fire" at the plant, according to the militsiia who round up villagers for evacuation to Kiev. But in Kiev things are not much better. The Petrenko family is eventually separated: Marusia stays with Yurko, who is suffering from radiation sickness, and Zosia takes her children to Moscow in hopes of a better life. Over the months that follow, Marusia battles to reunite her family and to return to Starylis, which has been declared uninhabitable due to radiation. While readers may find the English transliterations of names in both Russian and Ukrainian a bit