Blue Horizons

Author: Biruta Blumberga

ISBN 978-1-62137-921-8 (softcover)

216 Pages

Latvia, 1940. Alberts Tiltens, just out of prison, returns to Mezozoli, his birthplace.The Soviet Regime has appointed him local Party organizer. His mission? To convince the people of this thriving agricultural community that the system that is about to oppress and control them will bring comfort and prosperity.

The Mezozoli people recognize such lies all too well. Tiltens knows they will not believe him.

Blue Horizons reflects the lives of the residents as they are dominated first by the inept and brutal Soviets, then by the ruthless Germans. The two armies advance and retreat over their farms, wreaking havoc on the Latvian countryside. As the power shifts, the sons of Mezozoli ally with one evil element or the other, while the locals hold out hope for their rescue by the British and the Americans.

Biruta Blumberga masterfully portrays the shattered tranquility of the hardworking country farmers- with their livestock and berry patches, clover fields and traditions - as they succumb to a tidal wave of uncertainty, oppression and violence. Within this frightening chaos, Blumberga sets her bold story of love, survival and family ties -- of defeat, courage, love of country, resignation, domination, and Fate.

 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Biruta Blumberga is a Latvian writer, born in the early 1930s, who spent her early childhood on a farm in Birzgale, an agrarian parish about an hour's drive from Riga. That farm became a battlefield during World War II when both the German and the Russian troops helped themselves to all the farm had to offer, leaving chaos in their wake. In 1949 Blumberga's father and grandmother were deported to Siberia. She survived in Latvia with her mother and her sister, living a life from behind the Iron Curtain - a life filled with cruelty, poverty, repression, and uncertainty. Blumberga worked tirelessly through five decades of Soviet oppression; managing to feed her family and keep them safe. "Blue Horizons" echoes the fear and poignancy of those times, as does "Biruta's Garden of Stories", released in 2013. Blumberga now lives in a small town outside of Riga.