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by Greg Dinner (Author)
Part memoir, part fiction, A GEOMETRY OF SNOWFLAKES is a book of journeys taken, and journeys ahead.
A Writer journeys into present day western Ukraine, to witness the present, to experience the past of the Pale of Settlement in what was then Russia at the turn of the Twentieth Century. And too here is a journey into Czechoslovakia as the clouds of World War II begin to gather, when forgotten German documents in the basement of a suburban American house lead the same Writer into a search for a Kindertransport child placed on a train in Prague in 1939, never to see his parents again.
Two parallel stories intertwine in fact and in fiction to create a portrait of loss, of remembrance, of possibility.
In the act of bearing witness there is finally redemption. There is hope.
In 1909, a young man and his younger sister leave the Russian Pale of Settlement on a train from the present day city of Kovel. Behind them the life of their small shtetl disappears forever.
In 1939, a young five year old boy is placed on a Kindertransport train by his parents, bound for Scotland, before a door closes behind him. He will never see them again.
In 2018, in a suburban American basement, a Writer finds of forgotten box of documents mostly in German that in time will take him on an extraordinary journey into the past on the eve of World War II, as the world begins to change, when hate replaces hope.
And in 2025 that same Writer travels into Ukraine on a journey of places and people. A search for memories of the past. For the present world in a time of war. For self-knowledge. And perhaps for redemption.
A GEOMETRY OF SNOWFLAKES: imagine the past, live the present.
