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232 pp.
| Scholastic/Orchard |
November, 2004 |
TradeISBN 0-439-37307-7$15.95
(4)
4-6
Jake is understandably reluctant when his father decides to move the family from Minnesota to Karelia, Russia, in 1934, but life in the new Soviet Union is even harder than any of them could have imagined. Based on the historical migration of Finnish-American communists to Karelia, the novel has plenty of rich context but fails to develop three-dimensional characters to inhabit it.