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"Fresh, new, and long-overdue"
We've all heard the admonition about not judging a book by its cover, but reviewing a book is not always as straightforward as reading for pleasure or learning and sometimes entails a cover-to-cover assessment. Indeed, in the case of Yaroslaw's Treasurer, the covers (front and back), have quite a bit to say about the pages between and set the stage for adventures to come.
The back cover, for example, provides a one-paragraph summary of the book and brief plugs that invite prospective readers to explore a novel that blends fact and fiction and throws an innocent abroad into a "dangerous quest for Europe's greatest treasure." One comment advises readers to "think Hollywood action-adventure film Romancing the Stone with a young Indiana Jones thrown in." All of this is rather compelling and evokes a visceral "It's about time!" Here at last is a novel about Ukraine-in English-that is not about long-dead heroes or about the glories and/or woes of Ukraine's distant past. It is fresh and new and long overdue, and for this alone, well worth reading.
The front cover is more subtly compelling. The eye is drawn first to the bold orange letters of the book's title and then to the muted scene behind-a photograph of a rather bleak and dismal view of what looks to be an unpaved street or alley flanked by gloomy houses and other structures that have seen better days. Beyond these is a lone telephone pole, its drooping wires interlaced with the branches of several leafless trees. In the foreground is a puddle of water dappled with what at first glance seems to be amorphous yellow splotches. A closer look reveals that these are, in fact, a reflection of something beyond the camera's lens-the golden domes of a church, or more precisely (as the front matter of the book explains) of the Mykhailivsky Monastery in Kyiv. And it is this subtle interplay of images that foreshadows what lies between the covers-a novel that pits events grounded in antiquity with those of contemporary Ukraine and carries the reader through a series of murky puddles in which one soon discovers glimpses of something that shines and glimmers and illuminates.
Yaroslaw's Treasure begins with a prologue: "Kyiv, Ukraine, December, 1240 A.D." Set aside the fact that what we now call Ukraine was then called Rus' and you are drawn into a chapter that re-creates the last stand of the city's defenders against the Mongol Horde of Batu Khan. In the tradition of all good historical novels, there are references to real historical personages-Prince Danylo of Halych, Monk Nestor, Yaroslaw the Wise-even Dazhboh gets honorable mention. The fourteen pages move swiftly; the city is lost, the defenders perish, but a great treasurer is saved for posterity, and there are strong hints that it will resurface in the pages that follow.
What mars this otherwise well-crafted introductory chapter is the author's use of Ukrainian words where English equivalents might have been more reader friendly. We find topir (battle axe), porok (catapult), and similar terms, most explained in the text and further explained in the glossary at the end of the book, but the explanations and the need to flip from page 5 to page 274 are somewhat annoying. There are related problems with the names of historical sites: "The sound of thunder had come from the Zoloti Vorota behind him. There was fire and smoke by the Golden Gate" (p. 10). Readers unfamiliar with Ukrainian may well deduce that two separate entities are being discussed here. Even more distracting is the anachronistic "Pane Sotnyk," a military title that was not in use during the 13th century. This trend continues (albeit less frequently) in later chapters, which are peppered by "cholera" and "Metropolitan," both of which mean something to those of us raised in diaspora communities but are likely to leave other readers somewhat perplexed.
In Part I, the book fast forwards in time and place to Canada in 2002. Here we meet the novel's hero, Yaroslaw, who is sailing with his father off the coast of Vancouver. The sailboat is named Tryzub; a blue and yellow flag flutters in the wind, and the diaspora reader smiles at the familiarity of growing up with similar images that epitomize life as an ethnic Ukrainian. Our young protagonist's musings flesh out this concept with a description that resonates and sparks instant empathy between Yarko and the diaspora reader:
He stood there [on the deck of the sailboat] feeling waves of anger and guilt . . . memories of the force-feeding of Ukrainian school, Ukrainian soccer, Ukrainian boy scouts, and Ukrainian church . . . language courses, which earned him no credits, and being subtly pressured to find himself a Ukrainian girl. . . . those stories of heroic battles . . . struggles amid deprivation . . . somehow demanded similar achievements from him personally. Nobody actually said this to him. It was just the legacy of growing up ethnic. And every day that he shirked this undefined obligation only added to the guilt he now felt (pp. 20-21).
Here, as in the prologue, there are things that briefly detract from the story: Mr. Petriw's ambivalent use of the causal "dad" and the formal "father" and the one-volume Kobzar being described as "the collection of Shevchenko's poetry." But one quickly forgives the lapses and forges ahead, drawn to read more as the author introduces a letter from the past that compels young Yarko to visit Ukraine in pursuit of a mysterious family treasure.
Part II of the book is set in Lviv, and Yarko's first impressions of the ancestral homeland are entertaining as well as insightful. Ukraine, he quips at one point, is "like Alice in Wonderland . . . everything is not quite as it seems." He enjoys the local beer and admires a statue of a scalp-locked Ivan Pidkova, dubbing the Kozak hero "Johhny Horseshoe." But the sightseeing is peripheral, and our hero is determined to locate and retrieve the long-lost family treasure. Climbing onto the mountain bike he has brought from Vancouver and is now using to get around Lviv, he quotes Sviatoslav the Conqueror: "Idu na Vy!" But while this is philologically correct, the reader pauses to wonder why the author didn't use the more familiar variant-"Idu na Vas."
The pages begin to turn more quickly as we begin to see signs of the promised Romancing the Stone and Indiana Jones and then some. A stranger in a strange land, our hero embarks on a series of sometimes improbable but nonetheless fabulously riveting adventures, and you want to read on and on to learn what happens next. The characters Yarko encounters include a sexy blonde bombshell, a mysterious priest with a cell phone, and a policeman who is a member of a secret organization that has arisen to combat the forces that have prevented "independent" Ukraine from breaking free of Moscow's sphere of influence. Here the tale is liberally punctuated with the names of Ukraine's modern-day martyrs, puppets, powerbrokers, and rising stars. And it is this section of the book that confirms for the reader that "Yaroslaw's treasure" is a double entendre-the family treasure is intertwined with a far greater treasure that is, in turn, intertwined with the fate of contemporary Ukraine.
Part III, which begins in Kyiv on the eve of the presidential elections and reaches a dramatic climax during the events surrounding the Orange Revolution, brings new political intrigue and coincides with Operation Slava, a plan to unearth the great treasure that has been hidden from sight since the Mongol invasion of 1240. Here, a new range of characters come into play: would be kingmakers, a shadowy figure known as The Saint, patriotic miners from Donbas, international election observers, archeologists, Russian commandos, bishops, and someone who may or may not be an agent of Israel's Mossad.
A romance blossoms; a tunnel is excavated under the Hotel Dnipro; Yushchenko announces his intentions to enter the presidential race. From his window in the hotel, Yarko watches the ensuing political rally, "tens of thousands of people all waving orange or wearing orange or holding something orange . . . If it was ever possible to have a clean-cut, idealistic, drug-free Woodstock, then this was it" (pp. 141-142).
The plot thickens and accelerates as the forces of good are beset by a series of calamitous events and are threatened by denizens of the dark side that want neither Ukraine nor Operation Slava to succeed. Abductions, explosions, and shoot-outs take the reader on a wild and exciting ride. Yushchenko is poisoned, the election fiasco unfolds, the Orange Revolution makes the world watch and wonder. But to tell more is to give away too much of the plot and spoil the journey for other readers.
A brief epilogue wraps up loose ends and conjectures, simultaneously hinting that the story has yet to be finished and that the country in which most of the action has taken place has yet to find its own conclusions and resolutions.
At the end of the book is a biographical note about the author, followed by a Q & A interview that is illuminating in and of itself. Here we learn the author's motivation for writing Yaroslaw's Treasure-the realization that there was "a vacuum just begging to be filled"-as well as details that explain the whys and wherefores of certain nuances that so nicely embellish the story.
Happy reading!
Tamara Stadnychenko Cornelison, editor
Our Life
New York City
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