2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Powerful Story with Building Tension, January 9, 2005
This review is from: Hope's War (Paperback)
Imagine this scenario if you dare: You are 15 and have transferred to a new high school. Before you can make your way through the maze of teachers, students, courses, and cliques, you learn that the police have charged your 78-year-old immigrant grandfather with war crimes. Before you can make your way through the resulting maze of new emotions, questions, public scrutiny, and hearings, you learn that the government will deport your grandfather if it makes its case. To make its case, the government need not present incontrovertible proof or even strong circumstantial evidence. Tenuous innuendo is sufficient, for all the government must do is establish a remote probability that your grandfather lied during the immigration process about his activities in his former homeland. This probability can never be verified one way or the other, for the government has destroyed all the records.
This is not another account of a Kafkaesque cold war regime or a cautionary tale about a twisted brave new world of the future. The powerful story that unfolds before teenager Kataryna (Kat) Baliuk's eyes in "Hope's War" is today's threatening reality for naturalized Canadian citizens who emigrated from Ukraine after World War II. (Naturalized U.S. citizens who emigrated from Ukraine live under a similar cloud.)
A talented art student, Kat faces challenges of her own as she begins the 10th grade at the Cawthra School for the Arts after a stormy ninth-grade year at St. Paul's Catholic School. Her new classmates, with their diverse loyalties and cliques, already know about the incident that forced her to leave St. Paul's.
Her grandfather Danylo has recently moved in with the Baliuk family after the death of his wife Nadiya (Hope). When Kat arrives home from her second day at Cawthra, she finds two RCMP officers from the department of immigration's war crimes unit interviewing Danylo about the forms he filled out 50 years ago.
Multiple story lines intertwine in "Hope's War:" Kat must discover who her true friends are as she tries to fit in at school; Danylo must force himself to revisit the horrific days of the German occupation when 2.5 million Ukrainians--600,000 of whom were Ukrainian Jews--were liquidated by the Nazi regime; the Baliuk family must pull together in the face of glaring headlines, protesters, hate mail and the impending deportation hearings to support a Danylo they may not know.
Early on, Kat sneaks into her parents' bedroom and finds the official notice from the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration: "Kat dropped the paper back on the bed as if it were dirty. What did this mean? That her beloved grandfather was a war criminal? The paper talked about atrocities committed and collaboration and thirty days to respond."
Did Danylo collaborate with the Germans occupying his Ukrainian village in 1943 and 1944? And if not, why is the RCMP claiming that he did? Author Marsha Skrypuch is in no hurry to weave together loose ends and the answers to such questions. Instead, she allows the story time to unfold naturally with grace, passion and building tension before Kat and the reader learn the truth and for whom it matters.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Trouble at War, April 14, 2002
A Kid's Review
This review is from: Hope's War (Paperback)
Hope's War is a fantastic novel based on a grade 10 student, Kat Baliuk. Kat is a Ukrainian Orthodox child whose family immigrated to Canada. She lives in her home with Genya her sister, Walt her father, and her mother Orysia. Her grandfather Danylo Feschuk spends most of his time at Kat's house. His wife Nadiya died just this recent year.(In Ukranian Nadiya means hope- Hope's War)
Kat attends the Cawthra School for the Arts. After getting home one day from school she finds her grandfather at home talking to two RCMP officers. They started interviewing him about his life during Wold War ll. It brought back horrible memories, but she didn't hear them during the interview. Danylo felt pain as he answered questions for hours and the officers recorded the conversation. Once Kat saw them, she waved them away, and told them to leave her family alone. This isn't over, they answered.
The goverment has decided to search Canada for suspects of which
have something wrong with their immigration forms, and are trying to prove many Canadians who have worked with the Nazi's or done something wrong during the war. People are sending junk mail and rude pictures to his house, and under the doormat Kat found a slip of paper that said murderer.
On Ukrainian Christmas Eve they are startled by a protester who says Nazis live here. On Christmas day the newspapers are flooded with stories about Danylo, and a campaign has been started against him.
A hearing is called, and even though Danylo is innocent without any real proof on either side, what will be the final decsision in court? Read this great, realistic fiction to find out! ...
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
truth, September 21, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: Hope's War (Paperback)
at last some truth is published, pain is documented. we need more documentation about the tragedies endured by Ukrainians and the unspeakable crimes perpetrated onto them. we need books for adolscents for Communist genocide curriculums
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