American Ending

by Mary Kay Zuravleff

A woman growing up in a family of Russian immigrants in the 1910s seeks a thoroughly American life.

Yelena is the first American born to her Old Believer Russian Orthodox parents, who left two older daughters behind to build a life in a Pennsylvania Appalachian town. This town, in the first decades of the 20th century, is filled with Russian transplants and a new church with a dome. Here, boys quit grade school for the coal mines and girls are married off at fourteen. The young pair up, give birth to more babies than they can feed, and make shaky starts in their new world. But Yelena, mindful of the thoroughly American life she craves, puts off all suitors. Through a chain of fateful meetings, she is gradually wooed by the attentive but sickly Viktor Gomelekoff, born in her parents' hometown, who seems to share her yearnings. When she discovers what choosing Viktor has cost her, her life is forever changed. Will she find her happy American ending or will a dreaded Russian ending be her fate?

In this immersive novel, Zuravleff weaves Russian fairy tales and fables into a family saga in which every person is striving to create their own story within the storied American landscape. The narrative of transformation from immigrant to citizen is as winding, treacherous, and fraught in the time of the novel as it is today.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Russia, Historical, Audiobook, Novels, Adult

354 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 6, 2023

About the author

Mary Kay Zuravleff is the author of four novels. Her latest, American Ending, was praised by Alice McDermott as "wholly fresh and achingly believable." Her third book, Man Alive!, was a Washington Post Notable Book, and the New York Times called her second, The Bowl Is Already Broken, "a tart, affectionate satire of the museum world's bickering and scheming." The Frequency of Souls, her first book, won the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the James Jones Award. She grew up in Oklahoma City and has made Washington, D.C., her home. She has written and edited extensively for the Smithsonian and taught writing just about everywhere.

Reviews

[Amy B · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recieved this book as a giveaway. A story of early 1900s Russian immigrants seeking a better life in America. Trading one set of hardships for another. While this story takes place generations ago it is easy to see the parallels of life today. As this is not what I would normally pick to read, I was pleasantly surprised that I was so drawn in by the story.

[Annie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two epiphanies bookend American Ending, by Mary Kay Zuravleff. Near the beginning of the novel, protagonist Yelena realizes that her mother sometimes changes the endings of the Russian tales she relates to her children. The original Russian endings bother Yelena, because they’re so depressing and unjust. She much prefers the happier American endings. This realization echoes the stark differences she sees between her Russian-born family and community members and the American-born ones. At the end of the book, Yelena is somewhat surprised to realize how much control she has over the story of her life. She can either see her life as having a Russian ending or an American one; it all depends on whether she can hold on to hope or give up when circumstances threaten defeat...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss, for review consideration.

[Carole Burns]

I loved interviewing Mary Kay about “American Ending,” which so skillfully combined history, characters and story to illuminate our present.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...

[Cindy Bonner · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great way to start a new year of reading with Mary Kay Zuravleff's well-written, captivating novel about Russian immigrants at the turn of the 20th century. The book is full of evocative details about the lives of these people so desperately trying to survive and make it in menial jobs American workers would rather not have, as mineworkers, as longshoremen, as housekeepers, seamstresses, bakers. I especially loved all the food mentioned at the family celebrations that seem to take place over and over throughout the novel. And I was even a bit more enlightened about my own Eastern European immigrants who came to America just a bit before those in this book. My father, just second generation born in America, still had some of the folkways described so expertly in this story. But this is not a history lesson, although there is much to be learned about immigration policies through the decades here. All the descriptions of thecharacters's ideas and dreams are shown to the reader through their actions, and Zuravleff never tells too much but leaves a lot of the blanks to be filled in by the reader's own imagination. This is the kind of writing I love to read: something that takes me to a place I have never been, and writing that puts me in the mindset of the characters in the novel without calling too much attention to itself. Excellent work. Highly recommended. What a way to start out the New Year! Bravo!

[Marie desJardins · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book isn't bad, but I just found it tedious. I only made it about 20% of the way in, but really nothing has happened. There hasn't been any character development at all. It's just... tedious. And the main character is extremely whiny and constantly complains about how she's jealous of absolutely everybody and everything. I get that she's a kid, but she's an unpleasant kid. I just can't bring myself to care what happens to her or any of the other characters, so I'm bailing.

There are a lot of rave reviews, so either this book gets a lot better eventually, or a lot of people find the historical context interesting enough that the lack of character implant development doesn't bother them. Or somewhere in between. Anyway, not my cup of tea.

[PNWBibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars.

After a coal mining accident:
“…Father Dimitri chanted prayers at Olga’s house for all 45 old believers who died and were buried. We kissed the feet of an icon instead of foreheads they didn’t have.”

I may not be Russian, but I was a part of this family for all 320 pages. We follow Yelena, a Russian-American adolescent living with her family in a coal mining town in Pennsylvania in the early 1900s. Through her eyes, we are fully immersed in Russian Orthodox culture, foods, and the America of this transformative time. This story yields a unique perspective of what it meant to be an immigrant 100 years ago that poignantly mirrors some of our modern immigration discourse. We see this in the way laws affect Yelena’s own classification as “alien.” I loved the way we see Yelena’s place in the system through her discussion of new immigration laws, the presidents who passed them, and her interactions with Census workers.

This is not a plot-driven tale laced with unbelievable plot twists, but rather forges an authentic tale of an American born to immigrant parents and her identity in that society and the communities she belongs to. For those that value immersive, authentic historical fiction, this story is a worthy read. It felt as if I was there alongside the main character. The food, the interactions, the family life - all captured with longing tenderness from an author telling a tale that harkens to her own ancestry. There’s so much understated beauty and depth in the author’s own connection to this story. Labors of love and passion projects like this have that extra “jeuje” that makes the story connect on a deeper level. One of my favorite parts was the descriptive language used when the women go to a fabric shop. The way the mother’s seamstress knowledge was tenderly captured alongside the prose describing each fabric was brilliant.

Another component captured eloquently was the feel of this Appalachian coal mining town. It’s hard to distill the soul of Appalachia, but Zurravleff pulls it off. She has a knack for pairing meaningful prose with a story that captures the depth and breadth of identity. I connected deeply with this because I grew up just south of Morgantown, which is mentioned in the story. It so brilliantly captures all the broad strokes of what it means to be Appalachian, while also getting the minor strokes by focusing on one particular family and one time. We don’t get a lot of literature that does Appalachia justice, so it’s all-the-more prescious when a novel like this comes along.

There is so much depth in how the story connects with modern America. If you allow yourself to look for subtext and deeper meaning, the story does an excellent job of laying the scaffolding for this, which I believe was the author’s intent. A lot has changed in 100 years but a lot has remained the same. Are the coal companies abusing workers and buying the government much different than the tech industry of today? Are immigrants from Latin America not treated the same as Russsian and Irish immigrants of Yelena’s time?

Thoroughly enjoyed this and can’t wait to follow this author more! My only minor critique is that I could see others getting bored with the lack of driving plot, even if that wasn’t the case for me. I’m typically averse to a sparse plots, but the character development, prose, uniqueness, and immersive setting gleefully distracted me away from that. The plot didn’t try to pull off contrived, unnecessary plot twists, but rather focused on authenticity such that Yelena’s life feels real, undramatized, but nevertheless meaningful.

[Sue Charlton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was selected for bookclub in the winter of 2023. It’s set in a coal mining town in the early 1900s with the feisty and very bright Yelena. She’s a young girl who is the oldest daughter of Russian Immigrants born in the US - although she has two sisters who were born in and still live in the “old country” and she imagines their lives there. Her family is the center of her world and she, her mother and family work hard from sunrise to sunset to scrap out a living - a hard living. You are immersed in their culture, “old believers”, the fairy tales, food, language, abuse, as well as the strength and resolve it takes to survive. The book is an intimate portrait of Yelena as she grows up and her continual search for meaning in her life as an American and a woman. I can’t imagine I will ever forget her.

[Larkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moving picture of a girl’s life as the first natural-born American in her family. Solid characterization and dynamics within the family made the story engaging throughout. The fairy tales in the novel and the cultural differences that come with them were a beautiful way to emphasize the longing for a better life and contrast that with broken reality we live in.

[Chris Baldrige · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting book! Well written and full of interesting characters and a piece of history I didn’t know much about!

[Molly Quinn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe should be a 5 🤷🏼‍♀️

[Susan Stockdale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zuravleff thoroughly and convincingly took me into the world of Russian immigrants in the 1910s and the tough challenges they faced. The level of vivid detail (and the research it must have required) astounded me. I was completely engaged and learned so much about the immigrant experience, from how horribly women were treated (with girls married off at 14) to the recklessness of the coal mining industry. A compelling and beautifully written novel.

[Caitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yelena is the first of her parents' children born in America; two girls were left behind in Russian Poland. Her vision of America is essentially that of an immigrants child. She navigates the beliefs of her parents (Old Believers in the style of the Russian Orthodox Church) while absorbing the lessons of her Irish Catholic teacher Miss Kelly.
This book reminded me deeply of My Antonia and I was amused when about halfway through the book Yelena gets her own copy.
Mostly I was deeply touched by how profoundly immigrants love their adopted country and what they do to prove their love to judgmental nativists. Zuravleff does a masterful job of weaving in the xenophobic and anti-immigrant laws that America has passed and the way those laws impact all of us.

[Priyanka Champaneri · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best barometer of a good book for me? Realizing my reading pace is gradually slowing, because I’m getting closer to the end and want to stretch the experience as long as I can. American Ending immediately sank me into 10-year old Yelena’s world. Her voice is like none other—astute, wistful, petulant and generous. This is one of those books that stays perfectly true to its first-person narrator; the reader has to rely on dialogue and other clues for context, there’s never any “explaining” and I thought this was done masterfully. The effect is that the author obliterates herself entirely and all that is left is Yelena—and her story and the way she tells it are unforgettable. This is one of those books that revels in “mundane” details, but I love such things—food, the feel of fabric and haberdashery during a rare department store trip, the details on a wedding dress or a painted icon or a handmade rabbit toy. As I was reading I was strongly reminded of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, or even Radio Days—works where you follow the escapades of a family through a child’s eyes, and while the family might brush up against history at moments, the magic lies in the domestic and the so-called mundane. Add to that a steady echo of Russian folk and fairy tales and it becomes clear this is a book I will read again and again.

[Susan Coll · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have loved every one of Mary Kay’s novels, and American Ending is no exception. Set in the early part of the 20th century, Zuravleff has succeeded in creating a fully realized world of Russian Old Believer immigrants. It's a harrowing life for the men who toil in the the coal mines of rural Pennsylvania, and not much better for the women, who marry young and are expected to raise many children. Yelena, the protagonist, is determined to carve out a different life for herself. The novel is best accompanied by vodka and a Pirozhki or two.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully told story of early 1900s immigrants (mostly Russian) struggling in the Pennsylvania coal mines. Their courage, resilience and family values shine through the many hardships. The young child/woman narrator is wonderful.

[Kristin Morton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciated this book for the insight into the experience of the characters and the things I learned. It was well written and the characters were interesting. This would be a good book club book.

[Joan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yelena was the first of her family to be born in America, in 1899. When we first meet her in 1908, she is living with her struggling parents and younger siblings in Marianna, Pennsylvania, a coal-mining town southwest of Pittsburgh, though in their isolated and impoverished circumstances, it would seem light years away, though it is perhaps only 20 miles distant.

Yelena's family are Old Believer Russian Orthodox, a highly conservative sect, which doesn't allow married women to cut their hair, dancing or card playing, though all the adults, especially the men, indulge heavily in vodka. Roles are highly defined, and the men and their sons, some barely teenagers, work in the dangerous mineshafts from the early morning hours until they stagger home for dinner and then drink themselves into a stupor. The women cook, clean, sew, and perform other household tasks in primitive conditions, and there is never enough money, especially after the men indulge at the taverns. Tension and violence, domestic and otherwise, is high, due to the possibility of a mine cave-in at any time.

The town is also strictly broken down into ethnic and religious enclaves: the Russians, Poles, Italians, and "Blacks" each have their own neighborhoods. The Russians have brought a strong anti-Jewish attitude with them and they, and the Poles, their Catholic rivals, still believe that the Jews were Christ-killers.

The children, for as long as they are allowed, attend school together where they are taught by an Irish schoolmistress from New York. Yelena and her immediately younger brother, Kostia, are two of the school's brightest pupils, but they are weighed down with chores. Still, they attempt to learn as much as they can. Their mother, Katya, values education, and in fact speaks several languages, and reads and writes in a beautiful script. Her husband Gregor is illiterate, though not unintelligent.

When Gregor and Katya immigrated from Suwalki in Russian Poland, they left behind their two oldest daughters with Katya's parents. Katya saves and saves to bring them to America and once they finally arrive, Yelena's role in the household is forever changed, and she resents that. She is also forced to leave school before the fifth grade, though she continues to try to educate herself.

The book progresses through her remaining child and teen years, and her early marriage to Viktor, one of a set of brothers also from Suwalki. He was the eldest, born abroad, though his younger brothers were born in America, so were citizens from birth. Hard work in the mines, food allergies and asthma, which were not well understood, have made his health precarious. Like Yelena, he is as well-read as a person of limited schooling can be.

Yelena and Viktor press on to make a life together. They leave Marianna, eventually moving to Erie, where there is other work, but it is still a struggle with Viktor's poor health. Meanwhile, Yelena has become an avid supporter of the women's suffrage movement, and has a hero in Rose Winslow, formerly Ruza Wenclawska, a suffragist and labor movement leader, also from Suwalki.

In 1919, Congress passed the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, and it was ratified in 1920. Yelena is at home with her two young children when a census worker arrives to interview her. The young woman, a college girl working the census as a summer job, is surprised that Yelena, whose name she Americanizes to Elaine, as a married mother of two, is just 20, her age. The two women could not be more different. Yelena tells her that she is a natural-born American but when the woman finds out that Viktor is a still unnaturalized alien, she changes Yelena's nationality to alien, much to Yelena's shock. The law of the time, it turns out, was that American women who marry foreign nationals were no longer citizens...but a different set of rules applied to men.

...that law was the Expatriation Act of 1907. It said that any American woman who married a foreigner would assume his nationality. The 1922 Cable Act partially reversed the 1907 law, but it wasn't until 1940 that all aspects of the 1907 law were rescinded and women and men had independent citizenship that could not be stripped away by marriage. These immigration laws as they applied to the period of this book were explained in an appendix after the last page, with the 1940 information here my addition.

This novel was also one of my Mark Twain American Voice Prize in Literature choices to read and rate. I hope it will continue forward in the judging. It was vividly written, deeply felt, with strongly crafted characters, and provided a historical and geographical context that made it highly accessible. The author based this novel on the experiences of her own family in Marianna, now, per Wikipedia, a town of around of 400 residents. A major explosion killed over 150 miners in 1908, and is described in the book. The mine passed through several rounds of ownership and eventually closed in 1988.

[Joanne Leedom-Ackerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

American Ending, set largely in the coal mining town of Marianna, PA and also in Erie, opens in 1908 with the outspoken, captivating voice of 9-year-old Yelena, the first in her family of Russian immigrants born in America and sinfully proud of this distinction. We witness the immigrant experience of this Russian Orthodox family of Old Believers as they struggle to survive and learn what it is to live in their new land. Family is at the center of life, and Yelena, the smartest of the half dozen children, lives with the folk traditions and guides the reader through mine disasters, early marriages, assaults, escapes and ultimately a kind of victory as she chooses between an “American” or a “Russian” ending, and comes to see she must navigate her own ending. Along the way Yelena and her community meet U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, who makes a cameo appearance, but one with significant impact on the tale and eventually on Yelena’s sense of herself and country.

“…Roosevelt, who waved and grinned, wide teeth in his wide mouth, round spectacles on his huge round head. He was fatter than in photographs, as fat as in the funnies. ‘He doesn’t look like a lame duck. He looks like a walrus,’ Kostia whispered….
“Miners in starched collars were there to ride with him to the tunnels and back, but the president waved them off, including Paddy Hanrahan’s da, not even bothering with the two-bit tour…. ‘Colliers, all, I greet you,’ his reedy voice sang out. I wondered if the miners knew they were colliers. He threw his arms wide in amazement. ‘This modern mine is the envy of the world—you unearth more soft coal in an hour than others do in a day.’…
“While he knew how much the mine produced, did he know how an explosion rumbles along a seam, raining chunks of coal? Had he gotten a whiff of the afterdamp that suffocated men…
“I held up my hand… ‘Mr. President, over here!’”
Not long after Roosevelt’s historic visit to Marianna, there was in fact a major cave-in that devastated the community and only at the end do we learn of the more profound impact of Roosevelt policies on Yelena’s sense of identity. American Ending shares with the reader the perils and challenges of everyday life for immigrants at the turn of the last century and also the triumphs rendered through Yelena’s indomitable voice.

[Laura Payne · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the month of July, I intentionally selected books that highlight the American experience through the perspectives of immigrants.


This particular story takes a historical turn, set in the early 1900s, and follows Russian immigrants who fled their homeland due to religious persecution and in search of better economic opportunities.


The plot moves slowly, focusing on the day-to-day lives of immigrant coal miners in Pennsylvania. Much of the tension lies in the harsh realities they faced: dangerous working conditions, wage exploitation, and a system that kept them indebted to the mine owner. Their pay could only be used at the company-owned store, and even medical fees were deducted directly from their wages.


It’s a powerful reminder of how drastically life has changed over a century—children marrying young, leaving school early, and families struggling to survive under extreme hardship.


What struck me most was the contrast between the dream of a better life in America and the reality many immigrants encountered. They escaped hardship in their home country only to endure grueling labor and systemic exploitation here. The narrative also touches on how public perception and media at the time often dehumanized these workers, painting their suffering as a necessary sacrifice for "real Americans"—even though those very jobs were ones others refused to take.


This story offers an important, sobering glimpse into a lesser-told chapter of American history.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the title of this book and my questions were answered within the first few pages of chapter 1. What a great name for this book! There are references to Russian folk tales (see the wolf on the cover of the book) which are skillfully incorporated in to the plot. It is historical fiction, based on the lives of Russian immigrants working in the coal mines of Pennsylvania around 1900. The protagonist, Yelena, 8 years old when the story starts, delivers the story in first person. The details are often gritty as the impoverished families struggle with having enough food on the table (great descriptions of Russian meals), delivering healthy babies, keeping kids alive, and domestic violence. There are many characters. Many of them are women. The men mostly work underground and drink vodka above ground. I learned that there is a Russian Orthodox religion called "Old Believers." The author captures the experience of going to church, bowing frequently to the ground, disdaining Catholics (they've got the cross wrong) and Jews ("they killed Jesus"). "Not budging was most of our religion" according to Yelena. The author shared a Zoom session with our bookclub. It was awesome!

[Joan Fernandez · Rating 5 out of 5]

This fresh lovely historical fiction is told through the young eyes of Yelena, the daughter of Russian Poles who immigrated to America in the early 1900’s to work in the coal mines. She is a first generation American, claiming her identity in this new country while still firmly immersed in her family’s Russian culture. We follow Yenie’s story from early years as a girl to a young mother, and her journey from Mariana, Pennsylvania’s coal mine community to Eerie, Pennsylvania. Across these spans of time and space, Zaravleff’s storytelling vividly shows a difficult immigrant experience — dangerous work, family traditions, a culture of food and households, loves and loss, and the fingers of American ideas introduced through schools and other immigrants sharing their examples of making a life in a new country. The story is sad at times but ultimately hopeful and inspiring. The “American Dream”, its promise and how Yelenie embraces it as her identity is a powerful motivation for her. I loved how this universal idea of the desire to make one’s own decisions about how to live one’s life comes through Yeleni’s story. An arresting must-read for historical fiction lovers.

[Deb Faulkner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yelena, the American-born daughter of a Russian immigrant coal mining family, for an “American Ending” to her life rather than a Russian ending. Details of life in early 20th century coal mining town of Marianna Pennsylvania are vivid. Yelena’s mother is crucial to Yelena getting an education, even though hadYelena to drop out of school in 4th grade to care for her sister’s child. “Ma’s gift was being generous before there was a need, so people felt richer than they were.” Thanksgiving Day is like the stone soup story; how would Yelena’s family feed 18 people when they barely scraped by as a family of nine? Wild turkeys, mushrooms picked by a knowledgeable child, walnuts gathered, a wildflower bouquet, rabbit pelts as gifts. Thanksgiving was a feast. Yelena concluded at other times, though, that the Old Believers Russian Orthodox religion’s fasting requirements seemed made to “turn hunger into holiness”. The coal mining system is unjust. Girls marry young. Yelena has the impression that babies are born 9 months after a couple fights, and thought she’d never have children because the man she wants to marry is kind and doesn’t drink.

This book is relevant to present-day immigration issues. We learn about the Expatriation Act of 1907 that required America-born women who marry foreigners to take the nationality of the husband, hence losing their American citizenship. When Yelena married Viktor, she lost her citizenship. The Russian names were initially confusing but the “Cast of Characters” list at the end was helpful.

Our PA book group read the book. We found it a fascinating, valuable read. Zuravleff met with us digitally; we loved hearing her stories about her Russian heritage.

[Alexandria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, what a wonderful book and highly recommend! This well written, immersive story that really captured the time travel feels for me, and I felt as though I was there with Yelena, the strong heroine the entire time. This book is not what I would normally pick to read but I was pleasantly surprised by how it drew me in. I thoroughly enjoyed it and recommend this as a bookclub pick! There’s lots to discuss and reflect upon in this timeless story.

The vivid detail on life, challenges, new immigrant hardships, cultural traditions, and all the yummy food, really transports you back 100 years but also rings true to many of the same needs and challenges that immigrants face today. This story really resonates with me being from immigrant parents but 100 years later, and I can confidently say, a century later and not much has changed. The fragility of citizenship and the many challenges facing immigrants today or back then are still the same.

👍:
🧭 Time Travel
🍲 Food
🦸🏻‍♀️ Strong Female Lead
📚 Bookclub Book
😂 Funny
🖊️ Descriptive

[Agifford83gmail.Com · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book, even while it took me to some dark places in the lives of miners, immigrants and our country during the early years of the 20th century. Yelena and her family of Russian Old Believers are people I would have liked to know and I finished the book wanting to follow their story much further. The interweaving of their lives with Russian stories is powerfully intriguing. In fact, the first thing I did after finishing this novel was to order a book of Russian fairy tales so that I could read them for myself. What will probably stay with me the longest is all the questions this story raised for me about what my own family's life was like during the first decades of the 20th century. I wish any of them were still here to ask. There's so much richness in our daily lives that doesn't come through in the objects and papers that make it from one generation to the next. Mary Kay Zuravleff has masterfully captured some of that richness in this work of fiction that is clearly true.

[Ida Bostian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this novel! Yelena, a young girl born in America to Russian immigrants, wants to create a happier “American ending” for own life than her family and friends have been able to make for themselves. This is an especially tall order in the company coal mining town of Marianna, where most girls marry very young, and where they must cope with the physical dangers that their husbands and children face in the mines. Yelena longs instead to stay in school; even more than that, she yearns for her mother - or anyone - to really notice her and to set her apart from the crowd.

The characters in this book are beautifully written, and the setting - both time and place - come vividly to life. You’ll be rooting for the narrator from page one, sharing in her joys and sorrows as she strives to balance duty and dreams, and ultimately fights for the right to make her own choices. Highly recommend.

[Margaret Hutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the tradition of fiery, strong-willed young women in American literature--think Mattie Ross, Jo March--comes Yelena Federoff, the first American-born child of Old Believers from Russia. In 1908, Yelena and her family are bound to their religion—services are in Slavonic and worshippers bow all the way to the ground—and to the livelihood of mining—where the cost of a pickaxe is deducted from pay and the first warning of death and disaster is a foul smell, like rotting Easter eggs. In Marianna, Pennsylvania, Yelena may be the at the top of her fourth grade class, but there’s no guarantee she’ll make it to fifth; her future likely holds a teen wedding to a miner and threadbare care for a passel of kids. The story beams an overdue light on the underworld of mining and immigration, but Yelena’s spunky voice is the true lodestar through the darkness.

[Diana Rojas · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a good read this was! Zuravleff uses adept storytelling to show that the path to the so-called American Dream is never a straight line. With a delightful stitching of different lives that layer upon the protagonist, Yelena's, life, she creates a beautiful quilt of one first-generation American's existence and quest to become what her birthright promised. We see through the many stories of immigrants getting knocked down and getting back up again, of the immigrant crab walk -- one step forward, two steps back -- and the persistence of those who have nothing left to lose how this quilt gets passed on to the next generation, and we can imagine, to generations that follow.

Set in the early 1900s coal country, this book was (ironically) a breath of fresh air and had me rooting for today's immigrants, that they, too, get American endings to their stories.

[Marvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Immigrant stories abound, but this fine novel manages to carve out a niche for itself. It focuses on a coal mining community in Pennsylvania, more specifically on a group of Russian Orthodox Old Believers who are recruited from a town in Russian Poland to work in the mine, and more specifically on one family that left two daughters behind when they emigrated but added two more daughters and two sons in America, and more specifically on one of those daughters, a remarkable character who narrates the story. It's a story full of hardship and grief but the author manages to imbue the characters with a full dose of humanity and agency despite how much of their lives is controlled by the inhuman conditions in the mine and in the mining community. But, in the end, it's not clear whether the ending is a Russian ending or and American ending.

[Caroline Bock · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful, immersive story about grit, about family, about the hope of every immigrant family holds dear -- to have a piece of the American dream. This American dream is not about endings, but about beginnings -- these are coal-mining immigrants, Old Believers from Russia-Polish borderlands, in 1908-1920 in western Pennsylvania. The main character, Yelena, we meet at age nine or ten, and journey with her through young adulthood, marriage, children, and pulling her husband out of the coal mines. The details here-- on food, dress, households, sickness, births-make this an experience that felt lived not just told. There's an aliveness to American Endings, which made me hope that Yelena's story is not over yet -- that there is more to be told here! Kudos.

[Jennifer Oko · Rating 5 out of 5]

American Ending is a gorgeously written novel that immerses the reader in a little known chapter of American history. Through the fascinating and charming Yelena (the first American-born member of her family) we follow a family of Old Believer Orthodox Russian immigrants living in an Appalachian coal mining town in the early 20th century. Their navigation of crushing poverty, grueling work conditions, and rampant xenophobia at once brings history to life and also feels fully relevant today. But as dark as that can be, the magic of this book is that it is often joyful and enchanting, exuding bountiful amounts warmth, humor, wisdom, and fairy tales. I highly recommend it!