Book description
It is 1977 and seventeen-year-old Mona Manoliu has fallen in love
with Mihai, a mysterious boy who lives in the romantic mountain city
where she spends her summers. She can think of nothing and no one
else.
But life under Ceausescu's Romania is difficult. Hunger, paranoia
and fear infect everyone. One day Mona sees Mihai wearing the black
leather jacket favoured by the secret police. Is it possible he is one
of them? As food shortages worsen and more of her loved ones
disappear, Mona comes to understand that she must leave Romania.
She escapes in secret - narrowly avoiding the police - through
Yugoslavia to Italy, and finally to Chicago. But she leaves without
saying a final goodbye to Mihai. And though she struggles to bury her
longing for the past, many years later she finds herself compelled to
return, determined to learn the truth.
Domnica Radulescu won Romania's National Prize for Short Story
Writing when she was just 17 but fled the country soon after to escape
the Communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu. She is now a Full
Professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Chair of the
Women's Studies Program at Washington and Lee University.
