The story of migration from Soviet-occupied Latvia, to Nazi-controlled Germany, to life in a Displaced Persons camp and finally to America is the subject of a new English-language biography by Connecticut-based writer Jane E. Cunningham.
The self-published title, The Rings of My Tree: A Latvian Woman’s Journey, was released this month.
The book, written in the first person but not autobiographical, is the story of 83-year-old Mirdza Vaselnieks Labrencis. Cunningham writes that she has known Labrencis for 45 years.
“After I heard her story,” Cunningham states in the introduction to book, “I could not write her journey in the third person singular. To write ‘she’ instead of ‘I’ removed me too much from her and the depth of her experiences.”
Cunningham spent 30 years working in the aerospace industry and has volunteered as an English-language tutor. This is her first book.
The Rings of My Tree was released through Florida-based Llumina Press.
Jane E. Cunningham’s book The Rings of My Tree tells the story of a Latvian woman’s journey from her homeland to America.
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After reading your review about “The Rings of my Tree” I purchased the book.
Absolutely excellent!!!!!
As one born in Latvia it brought back memories and brought to rememberance things my mother had told me about….I was too young at the time to experience and ‘feel’ the emotion she felt. Now I really understand what my mother went through, during the war, to escape communism and to understand why she feared it so much..Thank you Mirdza for your Godly insight into a chasm of darkness. Now it is not so dark any longer and I can see more clearly because of her book.
Andrejs Vajeiks Ruments