Marilyn Oser

Rivka's War Marilyn Oser

Russia, 1914. Rivka, daughter of a prosperous boot maker, seems destined by tradition for marriage and the humdrum rounds of shtetl life. Then war breaks out, and things go badly for the tsar's army. When demoralized troops begin deserting their posts in the trenches, one unlikely officer recruits a battalion of girls to set an example for the men. Can a woman fight successfully in the front lines? Rivka signs on, never suspecting the terrors that await her, or the trials that will test her, or the mishaps that will take her from battlefields in the grip of revolutionary fervor, across the frozen steppes of civil-war-torn Siberia, and finally to the hot, dusty hills of Palestine, site of history's last great cavalry attack and first great air attack. World War I was a disastrous war; it ended in a disastrous peace, the consequences of which are still being felt today. Its effect on Jewish life in Eastern Europe has not often been written about, yet there and in Palestine that effect was profound. Taken from actual events, Rivka's War tells of loss and survival, portraying the impact of the Great War on Jewish life. It is a coming-of-age tale that will satisfy adult readers while being appropriate, as well, for young adults.