Red Hands

by Colin W. Sargent

A deeply compelling tale of a woman caught inside the destruction of a Communist regime.

'A VERY PERSONAL STORY OF LOVE AND LOSS... PALPITATINGLY TOLD... THIS IS AN EXCELLENT READ.' Morning Star

'... VIVID IMAGES, LIVELY CHARACTER STUDIES, A PORTRAIT OF A BRUTAL, CONTROLLING REGIME.' Historical Novel Society

'SARGENT’S DEPICTION OF IORDANA CEAUSESCU RESTORES HER AS A LUMINESCENT AND RESILIENT WHOLE SET AGAINST A TURBULENT BACKGROUND.' Midwest Book Review



Iordana is a normal girl, brought up with all the perks of Romania’s corrupt communist regime. Then she falls in love and marries the eldest son of her parents’ arch-rival, Romania’s monstrous dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. They become the in-laws from hell, but she brings them their only grandson. And then there’s the 1989 revolution, when crowds will kill anyone with the Ceausescu name. In all the blood and chaos, can Iordana keep her little son alive?

Drawn from eighty hours of unique interviews and told in Iordana’s own voice; this true-life tale spins readers into the pleasures, excesses and horrors of late twentieth-century Europe.

Genres: History

277 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 17, 2020

About the author

On the 2023 U.S. release of Red Hands

Hunt them down!

Heedless, headstrong, and headlong love. Who knew it would doom her country, too? Intelligent, stylish Iordana wasn’t interested in communist strategies while she enjoyed spectacular privilege–unimaginable to the 20 million souls living under the iron fist of a dictatorship ruled by a murderous family she chose to marry into.

But as a member of the elite Nomenclatura during Romania's cool 1960s, she had to have her Valentin. Just as she rose in the Ceausescu clan over her parents’ objections, so she fell when the murderous dictator and his criminal partner were taken down.

“Death to the Dracu grandson” rang through the subways. An angry world chased her and her son in an effort to wipe the name Ceausescu off the face of the earth. They hunted her from Bucharest to Israel to Canada to closer than you think. She escaped to the other side of the world, only to find herself branded an illegal alien in a quiet suburb on the coast of Maine.

Where to go? Where to hide? How will he even register for school? A tiny town in America will have to do for now.



On The Boston Castrato, 2017

One of the inspirations for my writing The Boston Castrato is a recovered memory. Cleaning out my basement, I ran into a battered report card from the Ledgemere Country Day School in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. "After a very rocky start, Colin's behavior has improved and is now more in line with the norm."

About this rocky start. On the first day of school, I slipped out of class, climbed to the attic, popped through the skylight, and crawled up on the roof for a good look around. At home, my climbing pursuits had been encouraged, as my father was a B-17 pilot. But in kindergarten, I was most surprised to learn this was not the case. As punishment for giving everyone a big scare, I was forced to sit for a week at the PINK table, where all bad boys were marooned. Yes, I learned my lesson, but perhaps just not the one intended. This was my first experience with cultural castration, in this case by gender color-shaming. In one fell swoop, all the girls in the class were insulted, too.

I feel connected with outsiders, people dismissed for their culture, the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, the cut of their clothes, their dreams. I even feel drawn to smokers now, exiled and marginalized, forced to do their dirty business in the rain. Once they were people. They were stylish people! Then they were people who smoked. Now, ominously, they are Smokers. Once we've given you a label–and yes, we're all guilty of this–we've got you.

My novel Museum of Human Beings was about Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, the expedition papoose of the Lewis & Clark Voyage of Discovery who we decided would remain a baby forever. On coins, in school, on paintings, in song. How easy. We didn't even use his name. We labeled him the Papoose, which is really what he was riding in.

We use labels to make sense of the Universe, but in doing so we create nonsense.

There is a growing awareness of the tension between self-definition (by sex, by attraction, by ethnicity, by race, by age) and cosmic definition. These handles become elusive under scrutiny. Gender is not in your genitals, and sexual orientation is not in your anatomical sex organs. Raffi gives up conventional manhood by going through the most obvious transformation for the promise of celebrity. The Boston Castrato illustrates how corrosive labels can be, and how castrating, in that they make a person feel powerless. There are so many other ways your power can be taken from you, some of our choosing, some by birth, and some by circumstance.

At a dinner party, a friend (who died last year of multiple sclerosis but always kept her own naughty sense of humor, even in paraplegia) rabbit punched me with, Must everything be a joke to you? in her usual Teutonic clip. I'm experimenti

Reviews

[Mandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This fictionalised account of Iordana Ceausescu’s life makes for some riveting reading. Based on over 800 hours of interviews and conversations with the author, whom Iordana had approached to chronicle her life story, the story is narrated in Iordana’s voice and feels very authentic. Iordana fell in love with and married Valentin Ceausescu, Nicolae Ceausescu’s eldest son, and was the mother of the Ceausescus’ only grandson. She was witness to the rise and fall of their infamous regime and personally saw how Romania spun out of control. Political terror, arrests and torture, shortages of even the basic necessities, all contributed to the Ceasuescus’ downfall in 1989, and the book is a compelling and fascinating portrait of a country and its leading family collapsing while Iordana helplessly looks on. A great read.

[Hattie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not for the faint of heart. If you are uncomfortable reading about what it is like to live in a communist society where people are starving, being denied medical treatment or given nonconsented medical treatment (forced pregnancy termination), gaslighting, war, and reading an account that details all this very matter-of-fact then it's not for you (because for her, this what it was like in her life for decades).

The description says in-laws from hell but I don't think that goes far enough. Her in-laws are the head of the communist country and they hate her. Her brother-in-law's girlfriend had a forced termination at 5 months while Iordana was also pregnant because her MIL hated Iordana and especially that she was pregnant. They made her life increasingly worse to try to get her to leave their son. Iordana did what she could in a horrible situation, even going as far as accepting "gifts" from her in-laws to trade for other people's medications and treatment (again, communist society), all the while her husband either was ignorant or gaslighting her into believing everything was fine (she always knew better). Her in-laws also ran the country into the ground while spewing propaganda that everything's good and sunny.

The book is based off a series of interviews of Iordana gave to the author and is written in 1st person narrative. She read the proof and asked it not to be published until after her death. The first half of the book is pretty slow, detailing how her and her husband met, got married, and lived before his parents took over the country. The last 30% discusses how the country went through a revolution, how Iordana and her son lived in hiding for the rest of her life, once this started I couldn't put it down.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fueled by extensive interviews and rich imagination, Colin Sargent inhabits Romania’s Iordana Ceausescu to give us a window into both a brutal regime and a remarkable woman. This novel is so many things—page-turner, history lesson, love story, thriller, and intimate view of family ties, power, and greed. Highly recommended.

[The Bibliophile Doctor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes a book bother you more than others especially when you already know that what is written has already happened with someone.

What captivated me first towards red hands was its title, secondly look at that cover isn't it beautiful. Yeah it is. Third was the synopsis which read like a movie story. In fact after I started reading I couldn't stop myself from wondering this does sound like a movie story. That it is actually unbelievable that this has happened with someone who walked this earth once.

This is a story of Iordana Borilă and her escape from Romania in anti-communist movement told in first POV , of her own after about 800 hours long interviews with Colin Sargent. As it is good through Iordana's own words the impact and the horror of the situation it offered was huge so I will definitely commend Sargent for choosing her POV to tell her own story.

To give you a brief history of Romania and the rise of communism there, Upon the outbreak of World War II in Europe, there was a rise of communist activists in Romania, two among them were Gheorghiu-Dej who became first communist ruler in Romania and second was Nicolae Ceaușescu who succeeded him.

Gheorghiu-Dej was imprisoned by Ion Antonescu's regime in the Târgu Jiu internment camp, and escaped only in August 1944. After the forces of King Michael ousted Antonescu and had him arrested for war crimes, Gheorghiu-Dej together with prime-minister Petru Groza pressured the King into abdicating in December 1947, marking the onset of out-and-out Communist rule in Romania.

While in prison, Gheorghiu-Dej met Nicolae Ceaușescu. They were imprisoned after a rally organized by the communist party, of which both Ceaușescu and Gheorghiu-Dej were members. Gheorghiu-Dej taught Ceaușescu in prison Marxist-Leninist theories and principles, and kept him close as Gheorghiu-Dej steadily gained power after their release from prison in 1944.

Gheorghiu-Dej was in power from 1947 till his death in 1965 which led to his successor Nicolae Ceaușescu to take his place from 1965-1989.

Under his rule, he tried to lay path for socialism in Romania which led to downfall of economy of Romania as well as turned out to be his own doom when protests against him started towards end of 1987. Initially the what was about just basic needs turned into a full blown revolution that led to his own execution for genocide by starvation.



Now coming to the book, Iordana was a daughter of arch-rival of Ceaușescu family, brought up with all the perks of Romania's corrupt regime of communism. When she fell in love with oldest son of Ceaușescu family, both families were totally against their union but they went against their wishes and married each other and Iordana's life turned upside down as Ceaușescu never accepted her as their part of the family.

I wouldn't say that her life was hard or sad exactly not in a way that will bring tears to your eyes, it was more like giving nightmares kind of horrors. She tried to survive whatever came her way and even that took a lot of courage. Living a life with people who hate you, who constantly look down at you or who might kill you isn't any easy. The life of constant threat is no life at all. But she survived that somehow.


This book is chilling and horrifying story of her and Romania and it is fascinating too. I will definitely recommend as it also made me aware of things I wasn't aware, long lost in the history's pages which I seldom read so that's my bad to be honest.

Thank you Colin Sargent, Barbican press and Netgalley for the wonderful ARC in exchange of an honest review.

[Mary Greiner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review contains facts, but not spoilers.

Based on extensive interviews, Colin W. Sargent has written a fictional account of the rise and fall of the Ceausescu family as rulers of Romania from 1965 to 1989. Sargent had the opportunity to interview Ioradana (Dana), who was the ex-wife of the eldest son, Valentine.

As historical fiction goes, this story is every bit as fascinating as anything written by Erik Larson. Sargent writes beautifully, and one gets pulled into the story. Although I describe it as being about the Ceausescu family, the theme, when I began reading it, seemed to be one of young love. Valentine and Dana were known as the Romeo and Juliet of Romania, because of the political intrigue, and bad blood between the families. As such stories usually go, the parents strive mightily to keep them apart, and the young lovers have more important concerns than the probable consequences of their union.

Valentine's father, Nicolae Ceausescu and Nicolae's wife Elena, take over Romania after the death of Gheorghin-Dej (by illness or otherwise in 1965). They take their lovely country in a direction utterly destructive to anyone but their inner circle. The riches of the country are drained to build monuments to their "greatness." Dana's father, who had been a leader in the country, is now on the "outs," made worse by the youngsters' romance.

The ensuing years are offered up with doses of human greed, ego, domestic tranquility turned to stagnation, and impending doom as the workers are made poorer, hungrier, and more downtrodden until it all erupts in 1989. While only the Ceausescu elders are assassinated at the time, the entire family is sought for imprisonment and possible destruction as collaborators. Because of a most heroic friend, Dana and her son escape Romania and end up in the USA in hiding.

This incredible tale is turned from news bulletin to a richly constructed novel by Sargent's lyrical writing, including a theme of red that runs through the book, humor, intrigue, and Romanian idioms and proverbs. Even if you don't know where Romania is geographically, after reading this novel, you are likely to find it in your heart.

[Dan Domench · Rating 5 out of 5]

Red Hands is Colin W. Sargent's masterpiece. I was hooked by the second chapter and carried it around with me for two days grabbing every spare minute to finish it. Though it is based on 800 hours of factual interviews it reads like a romance, then a thriller, and then became for me a powerful emotional experience. This novel deserves all the accolades it has received. It is amazing.
London's "Morning Star" named the book one of the top 6 books in the United Kingdom the year it was released.

Let me quote the summary of the book from Sargent's website: "'Red Hands' is a deeply compelling tale of a woman caught inside the destruction of a regime. Iordana is a normal girl, brought up with all the perks of Romania’s corrupt communist regime. Then she falls in love and marries the eldest son of her parents’ arch-rival, Romania’s monstrous dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. They become the in-laws from hell, but she brings them their only grandson. And then there’s the 1989 revolution when crowds will kill anyone with the Ceausescu name. In all the blood and chaos, can Iordana keep her little son alive?"

Sargent's first published books were collections of poetry: "Luftwaffe Snowshoes", "Blush", and "Undertow". I own all three of those books and I have gone back to his often mysterious and always fascinating poetry many times. His first novel "Museum of Human Beings" is included in the National American Indian Heritage Month Booklist and describes the life of Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, the son of Sacagawea. His second novel, "The Boston Castrato", was published in 2016 and was also critically acclaimed.

Why do I call "Red Hands" a masterpiece? Because it has all the best elements of Sargent's unique talents and his personal concerns; or you might say his personal demons. Because it is poetic in its descriptions and perfect in the dialogue. Because it reads so deceptively smoothly you don't even know he has you by the heart until it is too late.

Highly recommended. It is available presently in the USA on Amazon as a paperback. It is worth it.

[Mari LivTollefsonCarlson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Red Hands
Colin Sargent
Barbican Press
2020
ISBN 9781909954397
12.99 (UK)

Colin Sarget describes crafting Red Hands, his latest novel about Iordana Ceausescu, like salvaging scattered crystals from a shattered chandelier. For her, telling this past is not unlike shattering into a thousand shards all over again. Sargent’s depiction restores her as a luminescent and resilient whole set against a turbulent background.
Ceausescu grew up in Romania's Nomenclature (communist party). Both her parents had high positions in the government. As her father and his colleague Nicholas Ceausescu conflicted over Romania’s direction, Iordana’s infatuation with Valentin Ceausescu tempted her teenage rebellion. But the thrill of taking risks turned into fear after their clandestine marriage. The Ceausescu family disavowed her and she, in turn, rejected many of their lavish gifts. She kept Valentin’s baby despite the family’s disapproval. She and Valentin divorced amidst political unrest sweeping communist countries in the late 1980s. She and her son fled the country when the Ceausescus came under attack.
The dangers Ceausescu faces become all the more convincing in Sargent’s depictions of their interviews in which information leaks out bit by painstaking bit. In contrast, she comes across in the rest of the story as a confident and principled woman. The novel focuses on the actions she takes to protect herself, her son, and fellow citizens. “The people were free without Communism and the Ceausescus but they were desperate without someone to blame” (254). With elegance and journalistic precision, this novel speaks to the timeless struggle of individuals up against powerful collectives.

[Colette’s Bookshelf · Rating 3 out of 5]

📖REVIEW📖
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

📖Synopsis:
Iordana is a normal girl, brought up with all the perks of Romania’s corrupt communist regime. Then she falls in love and marries the eldest son of her parents’ arch-rival, Romania’s monstrous dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. They become the in-laws from hell, but she brings them their only grandson. And then there’s the 1989 revolution, when crowds will kill anyone with the Ceausescu name. In all the blood and chaos, can Iordana keep her little son alive?

Drawn from eighty hours of unique interviews and told in Iordana’s own voice; this true-life tale spins readers into the pleasures, excesses and horrors of late twentieth-century Europe.

📖Review: (ARC)
This is a well written true life tale which details some of the devastating events to happen at the end of the last century. It feels historically authentic and I haven’t read much from this period of time so found it really interesting.

*please note I received this ARC for free via NetGalley and independently decided to submit an honest review*

[Jennifer Hegeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Red Hands by Colin Sargent is a Cold War era love story that presents a nuanced look at the unintentional complicity of those helplessly caught in the gravitational well of evil. As a member of the Cold War era Romanian Nomenklatura or party elite, Iordana Ceausescu lived a relatively privileged life, enjoying the benefits of her social status. Her marriage to Valentin Ceausescu, the son of the ruthless dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, although opposed by both their families, propels Iordana from relatively innocent bystander to reluctant pawn of a corrupt and evil government. Finding herself despised by her husband’s family, and at the same time unable to escape the swirling intrigue of the Ceausescus, Iordana and her husband attempt to find a moral compass, striving to do some good within a morally bankrupt system. And yet, time and again, Iordana finds herself caught in the morally ambiguous web of privilege, as the need for the survival of herself and her child trumps her desire to distance herself from her brutal in-laws.
Ultimately, all hell breaks loose in Romania as Nicolae is overthrown, and the finer points of Iordana’s attempts to disassociate herself from the regime and its evil are lost as she and her infant son are judged guilty by association. We know that Iordana survives, as in the novel’s Prologue we meet her in Maine where she shares her story with the author, and yet as the tale unfolds it seems more and more impossible that she actually manages to escape the catastrophic ending of the Ceausescu regime.
Sargent’s evocation of cold war Romania is supported by luscious details of everyday life seen through the eyes of young Iordana as she grows into a strong woman in this archaic milieu of privilege and rot. Sargent’s prose is vibrant, and the novel maintains taut pacing, eventually becoming a real page-turner as Iordana and her child try to escape their doom. I have always immensely enjoyed Colin Sargent’s writing, and now with Red Hands he has brought forth a splendid work that brings to life a world long hidden behind the mystery of the Iron Curtain; I highly recommend Red Hands.

[Bruce Pratt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel, based on hundreds of hours of interviews with the protagonist is unique in my experience. Sargent tells the story of Iordana Ceauesescu, whom he found hiding in plain sight in Maine, with her son, having fled Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu's Romania just before their autocratic government was toppled in a revolution. Once married to the Dictator's son, Iordana went from being the privileged daughter of party notables to a hunted woman. Sargent's discovery and subsequent rendering of this tale will astound and fascinate you. It will also inspire a great respect for Iordana's courage and Sargent's writing.

If you read one book this winter you can make no better choice than Red Hands.
Bruce Pratt

[Alyson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the story of Iordana Borila who became the wife of Valentin Ceausescu, eldest son of the dictator of Romania. The story was told to the author over many hours some years after the revolution that toppled the Ceausescus from power. Even at this time Iordana lived in fear for her life - afraid that either fanatics or disgruntled Romanian would get to her or her son.
The last few years of Iordana's life appear to have been quite sad, but her early life was one of privilege. I didn't take to her much as a character, not any of her family or the Ceausescu's, but the history and the insight in the country at this period make fascinating reading and a book I was anxious to finish.

[Star · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book tells the story of the events that led to the 1989 Romanian Revolution which led to the death of the communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena. It was the period of violent civil unrest. The revolution ended 42 years of Communist rule in Romania and the last removal of a Marxist-Leninist government.
The story, based on extensive interviews, was told from the point of view of Iordana Borilă, daughter of Petre Borilă, a Romanian communist politician who briefly served as Vice-Premier, Iordana married Valentin Ceaușescu - eldest son of Nicolae and Elena.
Iordana lived a priviledged life as a family member of the Nomenklatura.
From historical point of view the facts were that in 1981 Ceaușescu started an austerity programme intended to liquidate its entire national debt of $10 billion. To achieve the target the standard of living of the Romanian people drastically deteriorated. Many basic goods including gas, heat and food were rationed. Romanians at this time faced problems of malnutrition and the highest infant mortality rate in Europe in the 1980s.
An example was the Scientific Nourishment Program in 1984 of all Romanians. The law established the average appropriate caloric intake which was to be 2800-3000 per day.
The book was a Iordana's personal memoir to that time in Romania, to her relationship with members of the Ceaușescu, to her love for Valentin and to her dedication to her son Dani's future safe from the past.
She fled Romania with her son soon after the revolution & went into hiding firstly in Europe, then in Israel and eventually in the US.
It is a poignant story that needed to be told.

[Brian Daly · Rating 5 out of 5]

RED HANDS is a novel truer than any nonfiction history of what happened when Nicolae Ceausescu grabbed control of Romania and drove the country off a cliff. Colin Sargent writes compellingly in the first-person voice of Iordana Borila Ceausescu, who married into the family, saw everything from the inside, and eventually had to flee with her young son while Romanians on both sides of the revolution hunted her. RED HANDS is an astonishing tour de force that must be read.

[Evan · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a child of immigrants whose folks were considered outsiders in their home country while simultaneously being cast as "speaking and looking funny" upon their arrival in the US, I could draw a parallel with myself. This story of identity and change and the internalized feelings surrounding it, particularly resentment and pride, resonate with my own feelings in that regard.

[Alexis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a truly incredible tale. Follow a woman who’s world is caught deeply inside the stomach of the communist regime of Romania. Escape and find splice in Maine. Colin Sargent writes full of raw imagery, details that overwhelm your senses, and gives voice to a woman who deserves to be heard.

[K · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book tells the story of the Ceauscescu years in Romania through the eyes of Iordana Ceausescu who married their eldest son. The story follows her life from childhood to her marriage to Nicolae and then to the fall of the regime. An excellent book, well written.

[L]

I cannot remember why I was intrigued by this book. I know that I finished it only because my inner Virgo took control and feelings of guilt for not finished loomed. I'm going to see if I can post this without a rating, because I don't want to be unfair to the author or untrue to my self.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love it! I couldn’t put it down whenever I turn the paged I wanted to know what was going to happen next.

[Emily Harrell · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️

[Rose Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

The fictionalised memoirs of Iordana Ceausescu were always going to be compelling, and this story does not disappoint. From a privileged childhood in post-WWII Communist Romania to her flight from her in-law’s violent fate, Iordana adds important detail to a modern Revolution. Perhaps other dictators, denying awkward realities and living extravagantly at the expense of their citizens should take heed.

The book is filled with cultural jewels and sharp international observations. Romanian sayings, often as chapter titles, provide ethnographic insight. My favourite is on the dangerous bad luck inherent in shirking one’s duties: “Better to let the house burn down from a forgotten cigarette”. One seemingly trivial (to non-Westerners; not to Americans, Black or otherwise) set of observations very early in the book are on how mid-1960s America was viewed in Romania. This memory is not far off from 2020 either: “The state commentator was giving us a carefully guided tour of the United States: guns for all, violent demonstrations, the assassination of Kennedy, the execution of southern Blacks in Selma. No surprise, since this was all we ever heard about the West.” Throughout, the writing sparkles: “The rooms looked as if Elena had sneezed gold everywhere”; “The clean decency of the trees”.

The tale meanders, somewhat, from anecdote to anecdote, a sort of relay race where the baton that is passed is the narrative of an interesting life. However, like watching a miniseries, pages turn as inexorable history plays out, only from the unique angle of a true insider. The moral of the story? When the fuse of revolution lights at last, the blast burns everything. An important book.