You Believe Me, My Dear: The Stories of Two Ukrainian Girls

Grandmom spits in the house, doesn't understand shampoo, calls potatoes pig food, wants Julia married at 15, and is an embarrassing nuisance. Teenage Julia has issues enough as a pastor's daughter without having to share a bedroom with a senile grandmother from peasant Ukraine. Born in 1896, Mariya Blashuk had an arranged marriage, was a German POW, and endured the chaos of "the Borderland." Ukraine was targeted for genocide by starvation, the Holodomor, in which up to 10 million civilians perished. Mariya's eccentric behaviours and senile antics speak the unspeakable.