The Baba Yaga Mask

Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award Winner, 2022 — Silver IPPY Award for Best Regional Fiction: Europe, 2023 — Finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards for First Novel, 2023 — Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards for Multicultural Fiction, 2023 When their grandmother is lost after a trans-Atlantic flight, two Ukrainian-American sisters are swept into a quest across Eastern Europe to find the woman who always told more tales than truths. From Poland to Slovakia to Hungary and beyond, Larissa and Ira navigate the steps of Ukrainian folk dance, the cliff-side paths of Slovak Paradise National Park, and the stark realities of love and war. Their grandmother's obsession with the wisdom and ferocity of Baba Yaga folktales is only the beginning of what they uncover. Larissa and Ira's journey is cross-stitched with their grandmother's narrative of survival within the epic panorama of World War II in Western Ukraine, where her coming of age echoes a country's fight for identity and independence. For teenage Vira in 1941 and her modern-day granddaughters, understanding their family's roots means everything.