National Network for Equitable Library Service

Away from the Dead is set in the chaotic times of the Russian revolution, and traces the lives of various characters connected through love and family and loyalty. The novel follows the lives of a bookseller south of Kiev who deserts the army and writes poetry to his lover back home; an adopted Mennonite/Ukrainian peasant who runs with the anarchists only to discover that love and the planting of crops is preferable to killing; and in which a Mennonite estate owner steals a young mother's child. Bookseller Julius Lehn is drawn by his first wife into the patriarchal world of a Mennonite colony beside the Dnieper River, where he learns that pacifists can be as vicious as those who fight. After his wife dies, he gains affection for Inna, who has been cast away from her adopted family's estate, and is the sister of Sablin, the peasant who fights with the anarchists and discovers that violence is the domain of both the rich and the poor. By late 1919, Lehn's bookshop in Ekaterinoslav (modern day Dnipro) has been destroyed, and he has returned to be with Inna, whose child is gone, and with the colony under attack. The anarchists, the Bolsheviks, the Whites--all come and go, each claiming freedom and justice. In a violent world with no end, Sablin and Lehn and Inna choose love, hoping that one can, against all odds, turn away from the dead.