The Rooster House: My Ukrainian Family Story: A Memoir

A timely and deeply moving memoir of a Ukrainian family and the country's tumultuous history. Inspired by the author's love for her family, and peopled by warm, larger-than-life characters who jostle alongside the ghostly absences of others,The Rooster Houseis at once a riveting journey into the complex history of a wounded country and a profoundly moving tribute to hope and the refusal of despair. In the Ukrainian city of Poltava stands an elegant mansion known as the Rooster House, thanks to the two voluptuous red roosters flanking the door. It doesn't look horrifying, and yet, when Victoria was a girl growing up in the 1980s, her great-grandmother would take pains to avoid walking past it, because the Rooster House was home to the secret police. ​Victoria grew up in Ukraine, moved abroad to the United States, then on to Europe.