It is always moving to hear how readers connect emotionally with a story, and Daryl Thomas’s heartfelt review of East to West Across Russia: The Long Journey Home truly captures the depth of feeling within this book. He wrote: 

“I cried so much after reading this gem of a story by an author named Christianson whom I have never heard of before. There is so much pain and anguish flowing through the pages of this novel. The author stated in his preface that it was based on a non fictional story but with fictional narratives spread across this memoir. I lingered on that scene in which the protagonist remembers his father and he does so by depicting the last moments of his life as he lays gravely ill in a hospital bed. D calls out for a miracle but it never comes and his father Thomas succumbs to the illness that plagued his body and tarnished his once working lungs. Christianson is a humanist and in his novel he is championing the goodness and core of what makes us uniquely human. The author does not shy away from showing the depths and depravity of human kind but he also shows the inner core of who we all are and what love and goodness exists there. I cried at the end when N departs D for the final time. It was a natural but tragic cessation.” 

Hearing that Daryl was so deeply touched by the story is profoundly humbling. When I wrote East to West Across Russia: The Long Journey Home, my aim was to portray the fragility and resilience of the human spirit. It is a story about loss, love, and the unbreakable thread of humanity that connects us all, even through pain. Knowing that readers feel that emotional journey as strongly as I did while writing it is the greatest reward of all.