Dancing Under the Red Star: The Extraordinary Story of Margaret Werner, the Only American Woman to Survive Stalin's... |
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Dancing Under the Red Star: The Extraordinary Story of Margaret Werner, the Only American Woman to Survive Stalin's...
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by Karl Tobien
Sales Rank: 316569
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$0.34
At Amazon
on 6-18-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 384 pages
Published by: WaterBrook Press June 20, 2006
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 1400070783
ISBN 13 Number: 978-1400070787
Book Dimensions:
8 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
Weighs: 12 ounces
From Publishers Weekly
Margaret Werner (1921-1997), an American citizen living in the Soviet Union, was 17 years old when the secret police came for her father, whom she never saw again. Left destitute, she and her mother fought extreme cold and near starvation, taking whatever jobs they could find. Seven years later, in 1943, the police came for Margaret. Accused of espionage, she was sentenced to ten years' hard labor. Tobien, her son, describes the appalling privations and backbreaking work in her Siberian prison camp, but also the prisoners' strong friendships and the dance troupe the women created with their guards' approval. A recurring theme is Margaret's growth in faith, culminating in her conversion to evangelical Christianity in 1991. Tobien tells his mother's story simply and chronologically, as if to a young audience. His use of a first-person point-of-view seems gratuitous, since he rarely explores Margaret's inner life. Despite the ever-present backdrop of Stalinist Russia, WWII and postwar communism in Russia and East Germany, this is less an analysis of cold war politics than a tribute to a lady who survived unimaginable horrors with her optimistic spirit intact.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
The bold claim of the subtitle notwithstanding, this is an exciting story and an overlooked piece of history. Margaret Werner, along with her mother, Elizabeth, and father, Carl, was among a group of Americans who emigrated to Russia in 1932 as part of a Ford Motor Company plan to assist the Soviet Union. Margaret was 11 years old when the family settled there, and her father soon became foreman of the tool and die department of the city's auto factory. He was arrested in 1938 and the family never saw him again. Margaret was arrested in 1945 on the trumped-up charges of treason and anti-Soviet propaganda. She spent the next decade in the "gulag archipelago," mostly in northern Siberia. After her release, she married, had a son, eventually was allowed to leave for East Germany, escaped to West Germany, and finally returned to the U.S. nearly thirty years after she first left for the Soviet Union. Margaret died in 1997. Her son wrote this book and it makes a compelling "memoir." Frank Caso
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Reader Reviews
In the mid-eighties, I took the Trans-Siberian Express round-trip across the Ukraine, Russia, and Siberia. I fell in love with this weary, but beautiful land and people, and in the years since I've continued to follow their struggles in the news. "Dancing Under the Red Star" reveals a relatively unknown portion of modern history, following one woman's arrest and imprisonment in Stalin's prison camps. The astonishing thing is that she was an American, one of a number of families that went to Gorky to work for the Ford Motor Company. Her family goes through years of trouble and harrassment, and Maggie's stamina in the face of these events is admirable. With a competitive sports background, she turns into a tough cookie in the prison system, surviving on determination, sly wisdom, and a growing faith. Penned by her son, yet revealed through her eyes, "Dancing Under the Red Star" never tries to be a literary masterpiece; instead, it's an endearing and inspiring tale of endurance, love, and raw perseverance. One particular scene, in a Siberian outhouse of all places, moved me unexpectedly. Other scenes still play through my thoughts. If you like biographical stories of true-life survival, if you like tidbits of little-known history, if you enjoy reading of times and places that make you once again thankful for the country in which we live, than this is one book you won't want to miss.
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Dancing Under the Red Star: The Extraordinary Story of Margaret Werner, the Only American Woman to Survive Stalin's...
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Price: $0.34
Updated on 6-18-2008.
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