Human Cargo — Michael Lee

“HUMAN CARGO,” a historical novel in the tradition of the Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago. A journey of young lovers in the most turbulent times in Russian history through the bloody revolution, unspeakable human cruelty and love no weapon can destroy and their triumphant survival. In WW I, Russian army on the eastern front is collapsed by the Central Powers. Captain Alexander (Sasha) Vasilievich retreats with tens of thousands of wounded and hungry soldiers. He returns to Irina, his fiancée and his family in his hometown in east Siberia. While visiting his hometown, a tragic event happens to Irina: she is violated by the most villainous Cossack general in east Siberia. Sasha retaliates but with little success. In the west, the October Revolution erupts in St. Petersburg that sweeps the nation into chaos. Sasha joins the Red Army and serves as a military intelligence officer to spy on the Allied forces in the Far East that assist the White Army in their battle against the Bolshevik revolution. After Sasha and Irina tied the knot, another tragedy strikes them. The Cossacks return to their hometown to avenge the deaths of their comrades. They set their homes on fire, and Irina sustains severe burns to her face and part of her body in the fire. On the fateful night, in a different city, Sasha is betrayed by a Bolshevik who sold him to the White Army. He escapes wounded. He returns home only to witness the utter destruction. He spends the next three years looking for his wife. When they reunite, they move to a human habitat to build a new life. As they strive to build a better life, his country betrays him. In 1937 Stalin begins the bloody persecution against Soviet minorities and deports Soviet-Koreans to central Asia, the first ethnic cleansing in USSR. Sasha, who was born between his Korean father and Russian mother, is among the 180.000 deportees. On the way to Central Asia, tens of thousands die of diseases and hunger, on frigid cattle trains without bathrooms or medicine. After four weeks, the cattle train arrives at its destination and ditches the human cargo, in the middle of the snowy steppe of Kazakhstan. Resolved to survive and rise again from the human cruelty, Sasha and Irina spend the first winter in dirt dug-outs living on barks, weeds, and winter desert animals.