THE SOLDIER'S CHILD
A poignant and powerful historical fiction novel based on the true stories of two Ukrainian families and a woman surviving a Gulag, desperate to find her son.
Now more than ever, people are witnessing the grit, hope, and sheer determination of the Ukrainian people. Now they want to learn about who we are, and our legacy will be our stories.
'A hurricane force breath of fresh air
in our over-filtered, perfection obsessed mediascape.'
About
Tetyana Denford is a Ukrainian-American author and freelance writer. She is also a translator for Frontline News, has written and edited articles for magazines in NY and the UK, is featured in The Telegraph and The New York Times, and speaks several languages.
She grew up with her Ukrainian heritage at the forefront of her childhood, and it led to her being fascinated with how storytellers in various cultures passed down their lives to future generations; life stories are where we learn about ourselves, each other, and are the things that matter most, in a world where things move so quickly.
Her first novel, Motherland (relaunched by Bookouture/Hachette UK as 'The Child of Ukraine'), is based on an incredible family secret that was revealed by her maternal grandmother, Yulia, only recently, and has been described by people as 'haunting', 'powerful', and 'a fragile and hopeful story of an immigrant family'. It was longlisted for the Readers Digest Self-Published Book Awards, and has been met with critical global acclaim.
Her 'conversation books', were published in 2021-2022 and are a series of three themed, handbag-sized books of poetry and prose, designed to help the reader reframe subjects in a way that can help them find hope, magic, empowerment, and love.
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Her current novel, 'The Soldier's Child' is based on the true events of a Ukrainian man and his son escaping a war, who discovers the mother he never knew he had, after she escapes from Vorkuta Gulag. At the moment, she is writing a new novel, release date TBD.
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B O O K S
What happens when the person you lose becomes the most important reminder of love?
What happens when we live with grief, when we invite it in, and share stories with our ghosts?
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In 2016, a family secret was discovered; a secret that Julia had hidden her entire life.
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The journey of that
secret, and the reasons why she kept it, is what led to the novel The Child of Ukraine (previously known as Motherland).
Motherhood isn't just one thing, it's everything. And the thing is, it's messy and confusing and glorious and ridiculous all at once. And we don't have to be mothers to know how to mother people, how to look after them, protect them, guide them.
All we need is love.
Love isn't just joy and flowers and declarations of obsession.
It is messy, it can be toxic, it is all-consuming and it leaves a mark on us, whether it is parental love, platonic love, marriage, love for a child, and self love.
Come discover who you are within all those layers; that is how we learn the meaning of true love.
Q U O T E S
'The Child of Ukraine is a fantastic bit of storytelling that will haunt you
even after the last page.'