In Search of Eve. Maksym Bespalov

This book is about memory and forgetting, about how easy it is to forget and how difficult it is to find what is lost. About how the most terrible ghosts of the past return to the present and how, having accidentally stumbled upon the grave of Eva and Maria Oryniak in the Pennsylvanian forests, Maksym Bespalov came to the main search of his life - the history of his own family. The author writes about emigration, epidemics and war. About how over 100 years ago, Carpathian boyars became miners in distant Centralia, the prototype of the mysterious Silent Hill, and died there from silicosis. How during the First World War, Galicians mobilized into the Austrian army had a connection with America, but did not have it with their relatives on the other side of the Carpathians. And also about the terrible Spanish flu pandemic, which the authorities preferred to keep quiet about.

However, this book is not about the past. It is primarily about the present: about the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In the end, it is not about the emigration of the Orynyaks, but about the desire of modern Ukrainians to escape their own. The documentary novel “In Search of Eve. A Story of Plague, War, and Emigration” is a lengthy essay about the search, where the search itself is more important than the result, and the journey is more important than the final point. This is a family saga of lost generations of Ukraine, the memory of which must be restored. The author worked on the novel for 10 years.