These People

My grandparents came to Canada in the 1920s, around the same time period in which Barbara Sapergia’s new novel, Blood and Salt, is set. My grandfather arrived a couple of years in advance; he homesteaded near High Prairie, and finally settled in Calmar, Alberta. He came to Canada following the same promise of land, freedom and opportunity that Sapergia’s characters follow. Eventually, my grandfather sent a letter to his wife in Warsaw telling her to sell everything and come to Canada with the two children. She did just that. One of those two children was my dad. So it was with great curiosity and no small amount of excitement that I picked up Sapergia’s sweeping historical narrative about a small group of Ukrainian immigrants at the advent of World War One.

The novel begins with a baffled Taras Kalyna, leaning against the window of a passenger train filled with other confused Ukrainians, on their way to the Castle Mountain internment camp. I knew about the...