Red Scarf (Furnivall)

Book Reviews
Sophia Morozova's relationship with fragile Anna Fedorina begins through a small act of kindness at a 1930s Siberian labor camp. As the two inmates struggle daily to survive, they increasingly rely on each other for hope and comfort; when Anna falls ill, Sophia escapes, intending to find Anna's lifelong love, Vasily, and rescue Anna. Beautiful and charismatic, Sophia quickly becomes a force to reckon with in the town of Tivil, where she hopes to find Vasily, and her connections with powerful gypsy Rafik, the handsome factory director Mikhail Pashin and the stern but unreadable Aleksei Fomenko become satisfying sources of danger and desire. Furnivall (The Russian Concubine) paints a stark picture of rampant scarcity, grim regimentation and blaring propaganda in pre-WWII Soviet Russia. In pushing the limits of Sophia and Anna's love and friendship, she nicely pits small lives against a monolithic state, paradoxically composed of watchful villages.
Publishers Weekly

Can a Russian Gypsy with mystical powers protect a wretched village from marauding soldiers and commissars? Does the daughter of a murdered priest succeed in springing her best friend from a Siberian labor camp? Will an innocent victim of the Gulag find her true love? Furnivall, whose previous novel, The Russian Concubine, was set in 1920s China, now moves to Siberia in 1933, when Stalin's agricultural collectivization policies sent millions to their deaths. Following the path of Dr. Zhivago and the more recent The People's Act of Love, this romantic confection can make a reader shiver with dread for the horrors visited on the two heroines imprisoned in a labor camp and quiver with anticipation for their happy endings. Furnivall shows she has the narrative skills to deliver a sweeping historical epic, but we get too much of a good thing with a too-convoluted plot and repetitive sufferings. Still, the novel arrives in time for great beach reading and will fit well into the popular fiction collections of most large public libraries.
Barbara Conaty - Library Journal

Beautifully detailed descriptions of the land and the compelling characters who move through a surprisingly upbeat plot make this one of the year’s best reads. —Jen Baker
Booklist