Treffen Tuesday

January – Ann Stewart, “REMNANTS: A Family’s Escape from Stalin’s Russia and the Child They Left Behind”

Presentation:

When I was in third grade, my grandfather told me he had been imprisoned. “Lubyanka,” he whispered as if I knew what that meant. “In Russia.”

I was horrified, wondering what my grandfather had done to be put in jail. And did this mean we were Russians? Worse yet, Grandpa confessed, to escape, he and Grandma had left a child behind. That didn’t match anything I knew about these two beloved grandparents.

Years later, when I came home from my first year of college, my dad asked me to investigate and record his in-laws’ story, knowing it needed to be preserved for our family history. For the next forty years, I wrote and rewrote, gaining further knowledge through advances in technology and access to information, waiting for the right time to publish the unbelievable story of two German Mennonites from the Crimea. I would learn how everything came down to one critical winter in Moscow 1929 when the rest of the world was falling apart economically.

The presentation will include visuals (photos and documents), stories, and readings from the book.

Biography:

ANN MARIE STEWART is the Christy Award® winning author of Stars in the Grass, followed up by IPPY award winning Out of the Water, and an October 2022 release of All is Calm, All is Bright. The next book, the narrative non-fiction REMNANTS shares her grandparents’ escape from Russia in 1929.

Ann also authored Preparing My Heart for Advent, Preparing My Heart for Easter, and Preparing My Heart for Motherhood and writes the column “Ann’s Lovin’ Ewe” for The Country Register. Ann combines her experience in education, musical theatre, and film and television to dramatize her writing.