Erin Litteken’s debut historical novel, The Memory Keeper of Kyiv (2022), employs a dual-timeline narrative to connect a family’s hidden past in 1930s Ukraine with its present-day descendants in America. The contemporary story follows Cassie, a young widow grappling with grief after her husband’s death. She moves with her daughter who has selective mutism, Birdie, to care for her aging grandmother, Bobby, whose increasingly erratic behavior and cryptic references to her past prompt Cassie to investigate a mysterious, leather-bound journal in Bobby’s house. As Cassie uncovers her grandmother’s story, the historical narrative transports readers to the Ukrainian village of Sonyashnyky, where a young Katya (Bobby) witnesses the brutal implementation of Soviet collectivization and the horrors of the Holodomor, the man-made terror-famine of 1932-1933.

The novel became a bestseller, resonating with readers upon its timely release during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Inspired by her own Ukrainian family history, Litteken uses the parallel journeys of Katya and Cassie to explore how individuals navigate the process of Rebuilding Life After Loss. The narrative examines The Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma, showing how unspoken historical atrocities manifest as psychological wounds and compulsive behaviors in later generations. A central theme is Preserving Memory to Resist Cultural Erasure, as Katya’s secret journal becomes an act of defiance against a regime determined to annihilate Ukrainian identity and history. Litteken has since published another novel focusing on Ukrainian history, The Lost Daughters of Ukraine.

This guide refers to the 2022 Boldwood Books paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide feature depictions of graphic violence, disordered eating, mental illness, sexual harassment, physical abuse, bullying, addiction, illness, and death, including child death, animal death, and death by suicide.

Plot Summary

In May 2004, Cassie, a young widow, is barely coping in her Wisconsin home. Her husband, Henry, died in a car accident over a year ago, an event that left their daughter, Birdie, traumatized. Birdie later experienced selective mutism in the wake of the tragedy. 

Cassie’s mother, Anna, arrives with news that Cassie’s 92-year-old Ukrainian grandmother, Bobby, has been hit by a car in Illinois. Anna convinces a reluctant Cassie to move back home with Birdie to care for the recovering Bobby. Upon settling into Bobby’s house, Cassie discovers an old, leather-bound journal filled with Ukrainian script. Bobby begins to exhibit strange behavior, hoarding food, wandering off, and murmuring in Ukrainian about activists and a woman named Alina. Cassie meets Nick Koval, a handsome firefighter who is also Bobby’s neighbor and a fellow first-generation Ukrainian American. Initially suspicious of Nick’s helpfulness, Cassie soon finds him to be a kind presence. Birdie, who hasn’t spoken in 14 months, begins to interact with Nick and, in a shocking moment, speaks for the first time, uttering the name “Alina.”

Intrigued and concerned, Cassie asks Nick to help translate Bobby’s journal and a collection of scattered notes she finds hidden in the kitchen. The notes are lists of food hidden in various locations around the house and yard, explaining Bobby’s hoarding. The journal, written by a young Bobby (born Kateryna “Katya” Shevchenko), chronicles her life in the Ukrainian village of Sonyashnyky, beginning in 1929. The idyllic narrative of Katya, her beloved older sister Alina, her childhood-friend-turned-fiancé Pavlo, and his brother Kolya is shattered by the arrival of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet activists. Led by Comrade Ivanov, they begin enforcing collectivization and identifying kulaks (peasants alleged to be hoarding wealth) for persecution. As Cassie and Nick delve deeper into the journal, Katya’s story grows darker. She witnesses the murder of her cousin Serhiy and the deportation of her cousin Sasha’s family to Siberia to perform forced labor in the Soviet internment work camps. In response, Katya and Pavlo begin hiding grain in the woods. The present and past collide as Bobby experiences age-related cognitive changes, her flashbacks to the terror of that time becoming more frequent and intense.

The journal reveals a destructive turn of events: Soviet activists attack Pavlo and his parents, killing the latter. Katya’s father, Tato, is likewise arrested and subsequently deported to Siberia. Katya discovers Pavlo clinging to life and nurses him back to health, but their reunion is short-lived. On their mother’s insistence, Katya and Alina marry Pavlo and Kolya, respectively, in a small, somber ceremony. Soon after, Pavlo leaves to join a burgeoning resistance movement. During his absence, Katya learns she is pregnant. Pavlo briefly returns to the village, only to be killed in a later skirmish. Katya gives birth prematurely to a son, Viktor, who dies shortly after. Meanwhile, Alina gives birth to a healthy daughter, Halya. As Cassie grapples with the immense tragedy of her grandmother’s past, she finds herself developing feelings for Nick, which sparks deep guilt over her lingering love for Henry.

The story descends into the full horror of the Holodomor, the man-made terror-famine of 1932-1933. As starvation grips the village, Alina falls ill, and her milk dries up, forcing Katya to become Halya’s wet nurse. To feed her family, Katya steals corn from a collective field, an act punishable by death under Soviet laws. Though she talks her way out of being arrested by a Young Pioneer who catches her, a cruel local activist named Prokyp later arrives to arrest her. In a moment of lucidity and sacrifice, a frail Alina confesses to the crime to save Katya and is immediately taken and shot. Devastated, Katya’s mother makes her dying wish that Katya marry the widowed Kolya to provide a proper family for Halya. Bound by duty, they marry in a loveless ceremony. They endure the worst of the famine, witnessing unspeakable horrors, including cannibalism and mass death, as they fight to keep themselves and Halya alive. In their shared grief and singular focus on survival, they slowly and unexpectedly fall in love.

Overwhelmed by the compounding grief chronicled in the journal, Cassie pushes Nick away, terrified of opening her heart to love and loss again. Shortly after, Bobby experiences a massive heart attack. Nick rushes to help, and at the hospital, Anna, Cassie, and Nick keep vigil. Birdie, who has been insisting that Alina has a message for Bobby, is finally brought to see her. She whispers to her great-grandmother that Alina forgives her and loves her. The message brings Bobby a deep sense of peace. Finally able to speak, Bobby reveals the rest of her story: She and Kolya raised Halya as their own, but Halya was taken by the Germans during World War II and killed in an Allied bombing of a factory. Devastated, they left for United States after the war, where Anna was born. Bobby tasks Cassie with fulfilling her long-held promise to Pavlo to tell their story to the world. A major revelation occurs when Nick links Kolya to Cassie’s grandfather, proving that Bobby found a happy ending with him after all. Inspired by her grandmother’s resilience and her advice towards holding on to her past while forging towards a new future, Cassie realizes she can honor Henry’s memory while still embracing a new life. She finds Nick and kisses him, accepting a future together.

Three years later, in 2007, Cassie and Nick are married and expecting their first child. Birdie is a happy, thriving eight-year-old. Cassie has published Bobby’s experiences as a book. While visiting the family gravesite, where a memorial stone for Alina and Pavlo now stands, Cassie shares incredible news: She has received a letter from a woman named Halyna Mykolayovych Bilyk, who read the book and believes she is the lost Halya. Halya survived the war and is flying out to meet the family she never knew she had. As a gust of wind showers them with crabapple blossoms, Birdie laughs, declaring that Bobby and Alina are happy.