Under This Unbroken Sky by Shandi Mitchell

If this all sounds a bit like Little House on the Prairie, then that's understandable. It is a simple tale of honest hardworking folk. It is also a year of pain, of dying, and undoing. It is a year of growing, of settling, of becoming. It was especially hard if you were an immigrant homesteader, with little English, and unable to pay off your dues a few months early.įrom this reunion Mitchell takes us through a year with Teodor, his own young family, and the relationship with his sister and her husband (Anna and Stefan Shevchuk). Life was hard for everyone in the prairies in the 1930s. It takes a while for it to sink in, that this is Ivan's father, Teodor, free after a prison sentence for stealing his own grain. The game is interrupted by a man with a loaded. In the Spring of 1938 Ivan and his cousin are catching mice in the barn and taking bets on which of the farm cats will pounce on the individually released rodents first. Partly they smile because they do not know what is to come.Ī page and five years later we catch up with the Mykolayenkos. Thin, underfed, in their summer clothes despite the four inches of snow, they smile. A black and white picture of a family, husband, wife and their three children, smiling for the camera. Inspirational.Ī photograph opens the story.

An old-fashioned book in the tradition of Sawyer and Alcott, with a modern menace building to a stunning climax. Rich with fiery conflict and culminating in a gut-wrenching climax, this is an unforgettably powerful novel from a passionate new voice in contemporary literature.Summary: Stunning debut novel that gets to the heart of breaking a homestead in the Canadian prairies during the depression, laced with the folk and family traditions of the Ukrainian immigrants.

Shandi Mitchell has woven an unbearably suspenseful story, written in a language of luminous beauty and clarity. Under This Unbroken Sky is a mesmerizing tale of love and greed, pride and desperation, that will resonate long after the last page is turned.

Anna's rogue husband, the arrogant and scheming Stefan, unexpectedly returns, stirring up rancor and discord that will end in violence and tragedy. But the family's hopes and newfound happiness are short-lived. As he tirelessly clears the untamed land, Teodor begins to heal himself and his children. While he was gone, his wife, Maria their five children and his sister, Anna, struggled to survive on the harsh northern Canadian prairie, but now Teodor-a man who has overcome drought, starvation, and Stalin's purges-is determined to make a better life for them.

After nearly two years in prison for the crime of stealing his own grain, Ukrainian immigrant Teodor Mykolayenko is a free man. Evocative and compelling, rich in imagination and atmosphere, Under This Unbroken Sky is a beautifully wrought debut from a gifted new novelist.

Under This Unbroken Sky by Shandi Mitchell