Intergenerational trauma. A search for closure. After his mother disappears during WW2, will uncovering painful truths help him find redemption?

Pre-Soviet Ukraine, 1915. Katarina Rempel dreams of impossible futures. Born into a traditional Mennonite family and expectations of marrying young, the feisty teenager yearns to leave her staid community behind and travel the world. But when bandits attack their farm, she barely survives with her body and mind wounded.

Germany, 1951. Peter Krahn longs to make sense of the past. Discovering his adopted mother’s secrets in a box of forgotten diaries, the grieving thirty-three-year-old dives into her worn words about living through the Russian Revolution. And he hopes to uncover clues about why she returned to her home country during WWII, before disappearing forever.

As Katarina receives an offer that would help her escape an unwanted marriage, she confronts a hard choice between leaving those she loves or losing her one chance at freedom. And while he finds a fragile peace in learning more about the woman who raised him, Peter struggles to sort fact from trauma-laden fiction.

Will a son’s search for answers finally set a mother’s soul free?

In a vivid account of the human struggle during a civil war, MJ Krause-Chivers crafts a gripping dual-timeline look into persevering faith amid violent political upheaval. And through two distinct and generational points of view, readers will get swept away in an intriguing take on courage and survival of ordinary communities and people.

Katarina’s Dark Shadow is the riveting first book in the Russian Mennonite Chronicles historical fiction series. If you enjoy strong women, richly researched stories, and powerful resilience, then you’ll adore MJ Krause-Chivers’s inspired-by-true-events tale.

Buy Katarina’s Dark Shadow to pry back the Iron Curtain today!