Martha’s Vineyard

Martha’s Vineyard continues emigration (and immigration) themes, started by Borovsky in her previous book Siberian Summer: The World Upside Down, an historical novel based on intellectual and dissident life in late 20th century Russia, especially during Perestroika, and on Jewish immigration to the USA, — ​but from an entirely different perspective. The Berlin Wall physically and symbolically divides two worlds — ​the “evil” world of socialism and the “free” world of capitalism. The reader sees the divided planet as if looking from the Cosmos, and engages in the lives of characters “on both sides” of the globe.

When the Berlin Wall collapses in 1989, the division is supposed to disappear, and the two worlds slowly merge into each other… Is that what is really happening? Life capriciously brings John, a successful businessman from New York, with Liza, a very educated and smart, but severely traumatized daughter of a Russian university professor; joining in the picture are Liza’s son Dmitry, who had grown up without ever having a place called “home”; and last (but not least)—Martha, a girl from an orphanage in a northern Russian village, who “wins the lottery” by being adopted into an affluent American family. How do these people adapt to changes in their lives? Their changes are not just “geographical”—but social, economic, and psychological. Each of them goes through their own struggle to find their place — ​and preferably adjust — ​to the new life that they had not necessarily chosen for themselves.