A masterful tale of love, conflict, and revenge depicting a young man's journey to adulthood in war torn Central Europe.
Synopsis
In this coming-of-age novel set in the heart of Eastern Europe during the years between the World Wars, a random act of violence by local anti-Semitic thugs casts Wolchi, a trusting and superstitious teenage boy, and Leja, his bookish but independent older sister, on a life-changing journey through a world gone mad.
The story unfolds over 15 years in the small towns of Western Ukraine, the urban sophistication of 1930s Krakow, and a wartime Soviet Union. A flawed, but loving Jewish family struggles with daily indignities — and its own betrayals and secrets — until WW II begins and they are shattered. To survive, Wolchi goes to work in a Russian war factory, and Leja joins partisans fighting the Nazis. When they return home at war’s end, hardened and pragmatic, the evil that murdered their family members was still walking the streets. That’s when they knew: Vengeance was the key to their future.
The Days Before Tomorrow follows a young Ukrainian Jewish boy’s journey to adulthood from the interwar years through Hitler’s rise to power. Along with his sister Leja, young Wolchi confronts the scourge of antisemitism in that part of Central Europe historian Timothy Snyder termed the “Bloodlands.”
As Wolchi grows, he uncovers a secret that threatens to tear his family apart and serves as his introduction to the imbalance of power in human affairs.
Working for his printer father, he gains mechanical skills that he hones in pre-war Krakow. There, he meets his first love and learns sad truths about the fickleness of emotional involvement.
As war spreads across Europe, Wolchi’s life is tossed from one great power to another. The skills he has acquired, however, serve him well as he is shipped to a wartime factory deep in the Soviet Union.
This story is told against a backdrop of family love and betrayal, first love and abandonment, and always the hostility between masters and their subjects. The author depicts not just the evil of antisemitism, but the frequent acts of kindness of those bound by a common fate. He does this with a masterful hand, exposing humanity and inhumanity with fully realized actors.
The descriptions are evocative. You feel the cold of winter, the rush of a winter, and the dank interior of a mine. Like Anthony Doerr's portrayal of clocks and radios in All the Light We Cannot See, the author’s descriptions of an old printing press are vivid and detailed.
The conclusion is satisfying, producing a climax the reader has longed for and a resolution that harkens back to the opening pages of the story.
The best historical fiction not only tells a good story well, but teaches readers something new, demanding that they learn more. Mark Hass does both in this well crafted tale of love, conflict, and revenge.
