Sastruga: A Tale of the Taiga

by Katharine Tree

His final winter Her final revenge Ivar Morozov has spent forty winters trapping on the Siberian taiga, and this winter is his last. He has only to catch a few furs, shut up his cabins, and retire to his wife and grandchildren. His life has been hard but he has been an honest man, and is looking forward to a happy retirement. Then he comes across a grisly scene in the snow, a beautiful woman in an ermine coat, horribly mutilated and left for dead ... except that she's still alive. What is her story? Who left her there? What did they want? And are they going to show up at his remote trapper's cabin, asking questions, if he takes her? Ivar curses his fate but knows he must save her life. He is, after all, a good man, and she is, after all, helpless and in need. ... Or is she? As she regains strength Ivar finds himself more and more drawn to her strange, silent ways and less and less sure that the life he has lived has been honest, or that he deserves to be happy. What will he do with the woman when she is well enough to travel, and more importantly, what will he do with himself?

56 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 1, 2019

About the author

Katharine Tree is currently a freelance novelist. She lives in the Puget Sound area with her husband, daughter, and a rumbly old grumblekitty. In a former life she earned degrees in biology, English literature, and linguistics and worked as an AI researcher as well as publishing academically in the fields of humor and computational linguistics. In her current life, when not writing, she gardens in the summer and knits in the winter.