Mother Country: A Novel

Written by Irina Reyn

Narrated by Kathleen Gati

Award-winning author Irina Reyn explores what it means to be a mother in a world where you can't be with your child

Nadia's daily life in south Brooklyn is filled with small indignities: as a senior home attendant, she is always in danger of being fired; as a part-time nanny, she is forced to navigate the demands of her spoiled charge and the preschooler's insecure mother; and as a ethnic Russian, she finds herself feuding with western Ukrainian immigrants who think she is a traitor.

The war back home is always at the forefront of her reality. On television, Vladimir Putin speaks of the "reunification" of Crimea and Russia, the Ukrainian president makes unconvincing promises about a united Ukraine, while American politicians are divided over the fear of immigration. Nadia internalizes notions of "union" all around her, but the one reunion she has been waiting six years for - with her beloved daughter - is being eternally delayed by the Department of Homeland Security. When Nadia finds out that her daughter has lost access to the medicine she needs to survive, she takes matters into her own hands.

Mother Country is Irina Reyn's most emotionally complex, urgent novel yet. It is a story of mothers and daughters and, above all else, resilience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Feb 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781721342426

Irina Reyn

Irina Reyn is the author of What Happened to Anna K and The Imperial Wife. She is also the editor of the anthology Living on the Edge of the World: New Jersey Writers Take on the Garden State. She has reviewed books for the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, The Forward, and other publications. Her fiction and nonfiction has appeared in One Story, Tin House, Ploughshares, Town & Country Travel and Poets & Writers. She teaches fiction writing at the University of Pittsburgh. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Brooklyn, NY.

Reviews for Mother Country

[Sandra Zuks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An interesting narrative about one woman & mother, leaving the Ukraine to start a new life in America. Examines the country's unrest prior to current circumstances. Weighs the cost of what you lose against what you leave behind when you leave a war-torn country, looking for a future that allows you a different outcome. One that she hopes she can share with her daughter. It explores the quality of life of refugees in America, the barriers and prejudice that she encounters, even among fellow Ukrainian people.

[reader1009-863136 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

fiction - Ukrainian/ethnic Russian emigrant holds down two jobs in 2014-16 Brooklyn but cannot rest until she is able to get her adult daughter (with type 1 diabetes) out of Ukraine, where political unrest over Crimea and Ukraine has put the area into a (fictionalized) civil war.Very hard not to think about the current escalated situation in Ukraine while reading this, though it was a change to see Nadia's more complex perspective, hearing slurs against ethnic Ukrainians that she didn't like but above all wanting to keep her daughter and herself safe.

[clara53_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Finally a book about Ukraine's plight. A woman's split-minute's decision will torment her for a long time, but she has to make it - for better or worse, for the sake of her daughter's survival. Not a fairy tale type of story by any means, but one with raw, uncomfortable self-searching, poignant hesitations and unwelcome discoveries; the author's good knowledge of all things "Ukrainian" and "Russian Ukrainian", and above all - bringing to light war atrocities in Ukraine.