The Red Scarf by Kate Furnivall

I really wanted to like this book, and I did, right up until the end, when it took a turn and couldn’t recover, at least in my mind. The Red Scarf is the story of Anna and Sophia and their friendship and struggles in a 1930’s Soviet prison camp. The two women have a very close bond and literally are keeping each other alive; Sophia physically helps Anna and Anna emotionally supports Sophia. This is especially true of the stories Anna tells of her childhood, and her friend, Vasily. When Sophia escapes, she promises Anna that she will come back for her after finding Vasily. Sophia walks for months to get to Tivil, the last place Vasily was known to live and is taken in and cared for by a gypsy, Rafik, and his daughter. There she slowly earns the trust of the town and becomes a force to be reckoned with. with the help of Mikhail Pashin, the handsome factory director, she helps the town fight the corruption that is Soviet Russia, most often embodied by Alexsei Fomenko. Sophia struggles to uncover Vasily’s identity and get help for Anna, before it’s too late. I enjoyed the historical aspect of the story, especially the brainwashing and community policing of life in Stalinist Russia. I didn’t enjoy the mystical tendencies that stemmed from the gypsy family – I felt like it went a little too far and while I don’t expect a novel to be 100% historically accurate, I felt like this was just too ridiculous to overlook. But I will leave it up to you to decide whether or not to read it.