The Darkest Evening

William Durbin

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781452931319

In the 1930s, some 6,000 Finnish Americans traveled to Karelia, a province in Northwestern Russia, hoping to leave the Depression behind and to establish a workers’ paradise. Based on these true events, The Darkest Evening chronicles the story of Jake Maki, whose father, caught up in the socialist fervor washing over their Finnish mining community in Minnesota, moves their family to the Soviet Union.

Instead of finding the utopia they were promised, Jake and his family encounter only disappointment and hardship. When Stalin’s secret police begin targeting Americans for arrest, his worst fears are confirmed, and Jake leads his family on a daring midwinter escape attempt on cross-country skis, fleeing toward the Finnish border.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• PART I IN SEARCH OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN FEBRUARY 1934
• PART II THE RED BROOM SWEEPS JUNE 1935
• PART III THE DARKEST EVENING OF THE YEAR DECEMBER 1937
• HISTORICAL NOTE