Set in 1910s Colorado, Stanislava, a first-generation American from a Slovene immigrant family, struggles between her traditional Slovene community and her desire to pursue a new life as she navigates self-determination, family duty, and the search for belonging.
A child of immigrants feels caught between two worlds and two selves in this powerful, luminous middle grade historical novel about self-determination, community, and what it means to belongperfect for fans of Esperanza Rising and Katherine Marshs The Lost Year.
When your family comes from Eastern Europe, you get used to being called a Bohunksomeone whos ignorant, lazy, and still has Old World farm dirt in their ears. Someone from a place that people dont care enough about to learn its real name.
Stanislava feels stuck in her deeply traditional Slovene community in Colorado in 1910. But when she finds a library book about an immigrant girls college adventure, she discovers a dazzling world of opportunity. Shes desperate to be like the books heroine, Katinka, who starts life anew as Katie and is seemingly living the American dream. So, like Katie, Stanislava adopts an American name: Sylvia.
Sylvia fantasizes about escaping her claustrophobic life and going off to collegeuntil her dreams are shattered when her older sister, Stina, elopes with a man their family disapproves of. Now Sylvia finds herself at a crossroads: quit school to fill Stinas role as the familys caretaker or run away from home. Stanislava would do the former. But Sylvia is determined to be free
