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The Other Side of Silence by Sylvie Nickels
A 21st century romance and a little-known episode of European
history
Pippa Eastman feels stifled by her autocratic father and eminent historian, Joseph Eastman. As soon as she can she goes to Australia where she meets Jude Jamieson. Years later her father develops Alzheimer's and she returns to the UK to look after him. Jude follows in search of his alcoholic father, a Ten Pound Pom who had left him and his mother in Australia.
The novel begins as Pippa receives an email from a stranger in northern Finland claiming to be a relative. Pippa knows that her father was the son of Josef, a Russian soldier, and a Finnish farmer's daughter, brought together by the Finnish-Russian Winter War of 1939/40. The book is the unfolding search for their roots by Pippa and Jude and thereby their finding of each other.
Pippa finds her grandfather’s diary, which her father had translated into English and which gives a vivid picture of the Winter War. She learns of evidence that her father had murdered a man, Kalle, who had been responsible for Josef's deportation to Germany, where he perished in a slave labour camp. Pippa is determined to disprove her father's guilt. In the meantime, Jude has traced his father, now sober and blind.
The book shows how Pippa and Jude, separately and together, conduct their searches and deal with their outcome, in the process finding a new depth in their own relationship.
Pippa Eastman feels stifled by her autocratic father and eminent historian, Joseph Eastman. As soon as she can she goes to Australia where she meets Jude Jamieson. Years later her father develops Alzheimer's and she returns to the UK to look after him. Jude follows in search of his alcoholic father, a Ten Pound Pom who had left him and his mother in Australia.
The novel begins as Pippa receives an email from a stranger in northern Finland claiming to be a relative. Pippa knows that her father was the son of Josef, a Russian soldier, and a Finnish farmer's daughter, brought together by the Finnish-Russian Winter War of 1939/40. The book is the unfolding search for their roots by Pippa and Jude and thereby their finding of each other.
Pippa finds her grandfather’s diary, which her father had translated into English and which gives a vivid picture of the Winter War. She learns of evidence that her father had murdered a man, Kalle, who had been responsible for Josef's deportation to Germany, where he perished in a slave labour camp. Pippa is determined to disprove her father's guilt. In the meantime, Jude has traced his father, now sober and blind.
The book shows how Pippa and Jude, separately and together, conduct their searches and deal with their outcome, in the process finding a new depth in their own relationship.
