Night Train to Odessa

Night Train to Odessa is a beautiful, moving, and insightful historical novel by Mary L. Grow.

The author draws on her Ukrainian grandmother’s accounts of the harrowing times of Soviet revolution and the invasion of Ukraine by the Red Army and the ensuing war between the revolutionary forces and the Whites, the conservatives supported by Western powers.

The author succeeds in rendering the atmosphere of a cosmopolitan seaport city, Odessa, as it is caught in the grip of the war, between Autumn 1919 and Summer 1920, becoming increasingly unsafe and full of vagrants, abandoned children, criminals, and opportunists.
The city, whose splendors are still glowing in the twilight of a closing historical era, is the setting for the story of Elvira Maria, a young widowed peasant woman who flees her derelict village in the north of the country hoping to find a safer life for herself and her two young children, Sasha and Ana. Instead, she ends up being forcibly separated from them.

The title Night Train to Odessa refers to the train that carries her alone and traumatized to the city, where, reluctantly, she has to make a new life for herself.

The reader follows Elvira Maria as she walks the streets and alleys of Odessa searching for her children among the street kids that survive as best as they can. In the bleak circumstances she shares with countless others, Elvira Maria meets Michail Lukashenko, a travelling artist running a puppet theatre, whose magic still enchants the city crowds. They fall in love despite their personal pain and the war.

Michail, with the support of some of his friends, such as the influential Heddie Naryshkina and his childhood companion turned revolutionary Ivan Dashkevich, helps Elvira Maria look for, and eventually find, her children.

Yet events take an unexpected, harrowing turn for them all.

This novel is a loving tribute to Odessa. As it depicts the unforgettable portrait of a peasant woman who gains self-awareness in dire and cruel circumstances, the city comes alive in the reader’s imagination and heart. Despite the tragic losses, hope still seems to be the only way forward.

The novel will appeal to lovers of historical fiction and to readers who appreciate the psychological treatment of the characters.

As of March 2024, it also is sadly significant and resonant to current events.