Friends of Leelanau Township Library have announced the award-winning author, Mary Kay Zuravleff, is scheduled to speak at the group’s annual meeting on June 14 at 1 p.m. in the Leelanau Township library. She will be discussing her novel “American Ending,” inspired by all four of her grandparents.
Yelena, the main character in the novel, is the first American born to her Old Believer Russian Orthodox parents, who are building a life in a Pennsylvania Appalachian town. The town, in the first decades of the twentieth century, is filled with Russian transplants and a new church with a dome. Here, boys quit grade school for the coal mines and girls are married off at 14. The young pair up, give birth to more babies than they can feed, and make shaky starts in their new world. However, Yelena craves a different path. Will she find her happy American ending, or will a dreaded Russian ending be her fate?
In this immersive novel, Zuravleff weaves Russian fairy tales and fables into a family saga. The challenges facing immigrants — and the fragility of citizenship —are just as unsettling and surprising today as they were 100 years ago. “American Ending” is a poignant reminder that everything that is happening in America has already happened.
Her third novel “Man Alive!” was a Washington Post Notable Book, and the New York Times called her second novel, “The Bowl is Already Broken,” “a tart, affectionate satire of the museum world’s bickering and scheming.” She is the winner of the American Academy’s Rosenthal Award., the James Jones Award, and numerous DC Artist Grants. She lives in Washington, D.C.
