For those who have read Still the Caretaker: A Latvian Girl’s Journey, you’ll recall reading short references to Alma/Māmiņa’s childhood friend, Liena Kalniņš, a seamstress/dressmaker who owns her own business in Riga. Her husband Oscars is a tailor of men’s wear. They are close friends of Zaiga’s parents, Alma and Adolfs.
My second book, which I’m writing now, is Liena’s story. She begins her telling while bedridden and traumatized by the disappearance of her husband. Two days earlier, during the night of June 13-14, 1941, Oscars was captured as the Russians’ seized and deported thousands of Latvians.
Liena’s life changes further when a coded list, abandoned in Oscars’s hiding place, instructs his groups’ ongoing resistance to the enemies.
Although this new book can be read as a stand-alone work of historical fiction, many of its characters and family members are those you met and loved in Still the Caretaker: A Latvian Girl’s Journey. Their stories continue in the second book.
In the coming months, perhaps when the first draft has been completed, I will occasionally publish excerpts from it here and on my Patreon page and ask for your comments.
