Five Fingers

Māra Zālīte, Margita Gailitis

• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781590179512
• eBook ISBN: 9781943150748
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Five-year-old Laura was born in one of Joseph Stalin's prison camps in Siberia. When the book opens, she and her parents are on their long journey back to Latvia, a country Laura knows only from the exuberant descriptions that whirled about the Gulag.

Upon her arrival, however, she must come to terms with the conflicting images of the life she sees around her and the fairytale Latvia she grew up hearing about and imagining. Based on the author's life, and written in lush language that defies the narrative's many hardships, Five Fingers tells the story of a girl who moves between worlds in the hopes of finding a Latvia that she can call home.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Translator’s Introduction
• The Train
• A Russian Babushka and Eggs
• When Laura was born
• The Major and the Candy
• The Platform
• Mīma and Grandpa
• The Avoti Farm
• But
• Krishka and Zavals
• Mrs. Teacher
• Why Avoti are Avoti
• The Blue Tire
• Polliwogs
• Heavy Clothes
• The Store. Don’t speak badly of Latvia!
• Mīma’s Goodies
• The Garden
• Francis and Riga’s Lilacs
• How you talk!
• Neighbor Liepa
• Oranges in the Field
• Visitors
• This fiddle wasn’t twiddled by Stradivari
• Dispatch
• Mama breaks glasses
• Manure and Gold Dust
• Books
• Papa’s got work!
• Blood
• The Hedgehog’s Coat
• Ruski
• The Shortage and Francis
• Saint Peter
• Bread with Sugar
• Grandpa
• The Black Door
• Snails
• Plaster
• First Aid
• Frogs
• The Bewitched Forest
• A Lot You Know
• The Well
• Laura is flying!
• The Tar Pond
• White Hares
• The Spoon
• Wayside Leaves
• Oh, Sacred Lestene
• The Fortune-Teller
• Five Fingers
• The Opera
• Horror Stories
• The White Ship
• Grandpa’s Ring