The Memory Keeper of Kyiv

In September 1932, Alina is delirious with fever and experiencing intense starvation. This affects her ability to feed her baby, Halya, and becomes a source of great distress. Katya is now Halya’s sole source of breastmilk. When Alina attempts to nurse, the infant’s frustrated screams worsen Alina’s distress. Kolya is distraught, fearing he is losing her. Katya and Kolya find a rabbit while foraging, giving Katya a brief sense of hope. During a moment of lucidity, Alina makes Katya promise to always care for Halya as her own. 

By October, the famine has worsened; activists have confiscated all food from homes and gardens to meet state quotas. Desperate, Katya goes to retrieve a jar of rye flour she had hidden in the hollow of a tree, but finds that it has been taken from its place. She resorts to stealing corn from a collective field, a crime punishable by death. She is caught by Ivan Yarkop, a local boy in the Young Pioneers. Katya slaps him across the face and furiously shames him for betraying his starving neighbors. He lets her go.

A week later, activists arrest the ailing Alina for the theft. Katya learns that Alina, in a moment of clarity, confessed to the crime to protect her sister. Katya runs to the prison house only to find that Alina has been executed and her body put on public display as a warning to other “thieves.” Kolya arrives and physically stops a distraught Katya from confessing and getting herself killed as well.

While gardening with Bobby and Birdie, Cassie takes off her wedding ring for the first time since her husband’s death, feeling it is time to move forward. Later, Nick comes over to continue translating the journal. 

During their session, they discover that Bobby’s Ukrainian name is Kateryna, often shortened to Katya. Birdie awakens from her nap and, hearing the name, says that Alina told her about Katya, which startles Cassie and Nick. After the translation session, Nick asks Cassie out to dinner for the following night, and she accepts.

In November 1932, Katya returns from foraging with potatoes, her face bruised and clothes torn. Kolya deduces from her injuries that something happened, but Katya tells him only that she fetched some corn, not revealing what it cost her. Kolya is enraged but feels powerless. That night, Katya records the experience of her assault in her journal, her only solace being her love for Halya.

Kolya learns of a Torgsin store where they can trade valuables for food. He and Katya go to his family’s abandoned farm; Katya waits outside near the old barn site while Kolya goes inside alone and retrieves a few pieces of his mother’s hidden jewelry. The journey to the next town is horrific; the road is lined with frozen corpses of their neighbors, including the Young Pioneer, Ivan, and they are horrified to see a death wagon drop the body of a small child. Near the town, they see guarded, overflowing grain bins and piles of rotting potatoes, realizing the state is intentionally starving them. 

At the Torgsin, they witness more death and desperation before trading their heirlooms for a small amount of food. On the way home, they encounter Prokyp the activist, now starving as well. When he begs for help, Katya furiously recounts his cruelty. He turns to come after them slowly on weak legs, and Kolya deals him one swift punch to the ground before they flee.

A fundraising call for the state troopers’ scholarship fund causes Bobby to panic and believe she will be taken to a gulag if she doesn’t pay. Later, Cassie overhears Bobby speaking to her deceased sister, Alina, expressing deep sorrow and guilt. Disturbed, Cassie researches “Ukraine, 1930s” online and discovers the Holodomor, a man-made famine. The horrific images of starvation finally explain Bobby’s food hoarding and terror.

Cassie shares her discovery with her mother, Anna, who is shocked. Anna recalls puzzling details from her childhood, like Bobby’s insistence on never wasting food. She now understands her behavior in the context of trauma responses. 

The next day, Cassie asks Nick about the famine. He confirms its details, explaining that the genocide was deliberately covered up by the Soviet Union and denied by journalists such as Walter Duranty of the New York Times, later awarded a Pulitzer for articles refuting the famine. As they translate more of the journal, they read about Alina’s death. Soon after, Birdie sees a photograph of the two sisters and correctly identifies them as Alina and Katya, deepening the mystery of her connection to the past.

By December 1932, Katya’s mother is on her deathbed, her body swollen from starvation. Her dying wish is for Katya to marry Kolya to provide a proper family for Halya. Horrified at the idea of marrying her brother-in-law, Katya only agrees to give her mother peace. Kolya’s initial reaction is that it will be an empty promise since there are no priests left to perform a wedding. Soon after, the goat named Honey, kept at their aunt and uncle’s abandoned farm, is stolen, depriving them of that source of milk.



Weeks later, their cousin Vasyl, a priest they thought had been deported, appears at their door. He recounts his harrowing escape from a Siberian labor camp and warns that the state intends to kill all Ukrainians. He plans to flee to the United States. Upon seeing him, Katya’s mother lucidly insists that Vasyl marry Katya and Kolya immediately, seeing his arrival as divine will. Now unable to argue against the absence of priests, Katya submits to her promise. Kolya, filled with bitterness, agrees that it makes no difference since their hearts are empty anyway. Vasyl performs the ceremony, and Katya feels numb as she is married to her dead sister’s husband.