Shirley Riell Brown

Anna Shirley Riell Brown

The relative tranquility of a small Shtetl (village or area of a village where Jews were allowed to live in Russia) was shattered by a devastating pogrom led by the Czar's elite soldiers, the Cossacks. Two young girls' lives are dramatically and definitively changed forever; Anna, the youngest daughter of an educated Jewish family and Petrovena, a village peasant girl; and both by an unusual Cossack Officer, Nicholai Kollenoff. While ANNA is completely a work of fiction, actual events and people are part of the book, and of course, pogroms were a very real part of Russian Jewish life. This epic novel takes the reader on a journey with Anna, Petrovena, and Nicholai through some of the most important events of the first half of the Twentieth Century including two world wars and the Russian Revolution. It is populated with unusual characters, some of which the reader will love while others will be hated. Action moves from Russia to France and the United States with interesting twists and turns that will keep the readers' interest alive until the last word.