Author’s Corner

Paul Jaskunas is the author of two novels: The Atlas of Remedies (Stillhouse Press) and Hidden (Free Press), which won the Friends of American Writers Award. A chapbook of his poems, Mother Ship, will be released by Finishing Line Press in Fall 2024. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, America, Tab, Little Patuxent Review, and the Vilnius Review, among many other publications. Since 2008, he has taught literature and writing at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, where he edits Full Bleed, an annual journal devoted to the intersection of the visual and literary arts.  www.jaskunas.com.

Frightened that the grippe will steal away the life of her beloved cousin Marija, the only family she has in New York, Karolina steps out into the cold and unforgiving city streets to buy chamomile flowers, a tried-and-true remedy from her old life in Lithuania. Meanwhile, her children struggle to navigate through Cossack-occupied Europe to reach the port of Hamburg and sail to America for a desperately sought reunion.

Set in 1901, Paul Jaskunas’s multi-generational immigrant saga-in-miniature nimbly blends historical realism with a dreamlike aesthetic to create a unique and arresting portrait of one family hoping that America will make good on its promise.

One black dawn, in the winter of 1901, the children’s uncle rose to hunt. The boy, in bed, waited until he could no longer hear the sound of the man’s boots breaking the crust of snow in the yard. Then he looked at his older sister Ona, who slept beside him in bed. He could see her breath in the air. Their uncle had neglected to start the fire, so Lukas crept into the kitchen and, as quietly as he could, placed split logs of pine into the ashy stove. She continued sleeping as he lit the fire and built it up fierce and hot. If he made the house warm enough, she wouldn’t wake from the cold, and he could slip away unseen. 

He stretched and kicked the stove door closed with his bare foot. Through the grate, the flames made soft shadows leap on the wall. By their light, he could see the remains of his uncle’s breakfast—a half-eaten sausage and a hunk of black bread. He sliced these thinly with a knife and ate them together, stuffing his mouth and chewing fast as he knelt before the stove to warm himself. He watched the flames through the grate in a trance, fixing in his mind the wide orbit of the sun swinging over New York, shining upon his mother’s shoulders. Holding an apple in one hand, an egg in another, his sister had explained to him the mystery of the sun being two places at once. Still, it wasn’t easy to grasp the simultaneity of his dawn and his mother’s noon. 

He dressed in silence, in his warmest clothes, his coat, and boots. Avoiding the creaky boards in the floor, he went to a high shelf and stood on a stool to reach a Jesus figurine carved from oak. Inside its hollow core, he found a small purse of leather. He spilled three coins into his hand and pocketed them. Then he went into the cold, closing the wood door gently. 

The forest loomed across the yard. He paused before it, considering the dark spaces between trees. As he began to walk, the sound of the snow breaking under his boots gave him courage. 

It was four kilometers to the village. The way would take him through long stretches of forest and marshland now trapped in ice. Tall pines with cinnamon-colored trunks held snow in their branches. Invisible creatures had inscribed the white forest floor with ink-like tracings. Elk roamed these woods, and his uncle was hunting them even now, at first light, when every twig and log looked touched by the grace of a wintery god. Lukas had walked long enough to feel the cold in his toes when he heard the first shot echo through the pines. 

There would be a corpse in the yard tonight. The children would be expected to strip the hide and butcher the meat amid a hot glut of gore. He’d rather eat old potatoes all winter than confront the bloodied face of the elk.

“Like any good fairy tale told over a steaming cup of chamomile tea by a winter fire, this short book delights with dark woods, perilous quests, animal familiars, and kindly strangers, but its simplicity is deceptive, and it soon weaves into a gentle meditation on worlds Old and New, on losses big and small, and on the gift of human connection, both familial and fleeting. One of the most moving stories I have read in recent years.” 

— Olga Grushin, author of The Charmed Wife and Forty Rooms 

“Written with acute observation, this is a beautifully told tale of separation, hardship and longing that will move and enthrall. I loved these people and never wanted to leave them.”

— Edward Carey, author of Little and The Swallowed Man