THEY HAVE CONQUERED

Wiens’ novel, the first of a two-volume series, offers a fictionalized history of his Mennonite family, from the 19th century in Russian Ukraine to their arrival in America in 1922.

In 1894, 7-year-old Gerhardt Wiens is on a ship with his parents and siblings heading back to Europe. Although happy with his American life in a Mennonite community in Kansas, Gerhardt is nonetheless excited about this new adventure, which will bring him to his homeland in southern Ukraine. His father, Heinrich, has grown disillusioned with what he sees as the chaos of American culture, where strikers can stop rail travel and the government changes every few years. “America is too politically unstable and will probably come to another revolution,” he tells his sons. “We’ll be better off back in Russia where it’s peaceful, stable, and safe.” Little does he anticipate the turmoil that will bring havoc to his family over the coming decades. The Wiens family are prosperous farmers, and Heinrich increases his holdings during the first decade of the 20th century. In 1910, Gerhardt decides it’s time to marry, have children, and become a landowner in his own right. Shortly after his wedding, he sets out for southern Siberia and purchases farming land in Kazakhstan. When World War I erupts, everything changes. Originally exempt from military service on religious grounds, Gerhardt is drafted into the ambulance corps—then comes the Russian Revolution. Gerhardt and his family are the center of the narrative, but the presentation of their individual sagas is more factual than emotional in tone. The drama in the story rests in the gritty details of the world war on the Eastern Front, with its massive losses of troops and military disorganization, both leading to dissension in the ranks, followed by years of violence in which competing factions of communist revolutionaries battle for control of the empire. More uplifting are the sections that portray the kaleidoscope of nationalities, ethnicities, and cultural traditions that co-existed—occasionally amicably, other times less so—in what was the Russian Empire.

A family saga light on personal interactions but filled with historical nuggets.