Black Sunflowers
by Cynthia LeBrun
Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2024
ISBN 978-1554556434 (sc)
$21.95, 496 pp, ages 16+
fitzhenry.ca
A two-decade-long labour of love by former BC educator Cynthia LeBrun, Black Sunflowers offers a fictionalized account of her mother-in-law’s real-life experiences in Soviet-controlled Ukraine. Growing up in the community of Kuzman, a daughter of Roman Catholic Polish settlers, Veronica Osiecka was originally a happy, clever, and somewhat mischievous child. The story begins in 1929—when Veronica was just six years of age—as Soviet authorities started to exert tighter control over Ukraine. Using their wiles, her parents managed to avoid utter starvation and deportation during the following tumultuous years. Nonetheless, Veronica eventually witnesses forced collectivization, including the persecution of “rich Kulak” peasant relatives and educated neighbours. That grim process was followed shortly thereafter by Stalin’s Holodomor, which aimed to deliberately starve the country into submission by seizing all food supplies. The account culminates with the eventual invasion of the region by Nazis troops in the summer of 1941. Veronica sees SS Einsatzgruppen death squads, along with local Ukrainian antisemites, terrorizing the Jewish population before finding herself in a locked cattle car heading west to Germany as a conscripted foreign worker.
Classroom Connections: Due to its length, at nearly 500 pages, Black Sunflowers is probably best directed towards secondary school or post-secondary audiences. Inhumane measures by uncaring officials, genocidal efforts, including forced assimilation of children, a brutal military invasion, and desperate efforts taken by ordinary folk to ensure survival are major themes of this work. In light of the conditions in contemporary Ukraine, educators can help students make many connections. The book includes a number of useful illustrations (such as several maps and family trees) as well as fifteen black-and-white photographs from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Review by George Sheppard.
This review is featured in Canadian Teacher Magazine’s Winter 2025 issue.
