Echoes of a Native Land

Russia is a land of far-flung villages, even though most of its history has been made in the cities. In this affecting narrative, New York Times correspondent Serge Schmemann returns to his ancestral village of Koltsovo, 90 miles south of Moscow, to plumb the histories of both his forebears and the country. Drawing on a range of archival material, Schmemann offers a narrative as packed with names, incidents, and memories as any Tolstoy novel. His search for roots yields a compassionate portrait of a nation in difficult times that is full of details about daily life.