Beyond the Birch Trees: Short Tales of Growing Up Soviet

Imagine living in a place where almost anything fun – books, films, parties, music – can only be obtained through secretive connections and with the risk of arrest or worse. This is the Soviet Union in its final decades, a nation creaking toward collapse.

It’s also where Vicka Kharitonova grew up. This is her story. Vicka is not a political rebel, just a strong-willed girl from a secular Jewish family, trying to create a life worth living in a dystopian country that science fiction can only imitate. Beyond the Birch Trees: Short Tales of Growing Up Soviet chronicles Vicka’s search for adventure and romance, from childhood with loving parents to her departure for the United States as a young woman.

Written in 35 fast-paced vignettes, it takes readers from Moscow to distant Siberia to the rugged Tien Shan mountain ranges and Crimean vacation towns. It’s a portrait of a place and time that are now gone forever, a small story that nonetheless tells a larger tale of an individual against the state.