On Our Way Home from the Revolution

Reflections on Ukraine

By: Sonya Bilocerkowycz

Narrated by: Sonya Bilocerkowycz

In 2014, Sonya Bilocerkowycz is a tourist at a deadly revolution. At first she is enamored with the Ukrainians' idealism, which reminds her of her own patriotic family. But when the romantic revolution melts into a war with Russia, she becomes disillusioned, prompting a return home to the US and the diaspora community that raised her. As the daughter of a man who studies Ukrainian dissidents for a living, the granddaughter of war refugees, and the great-granddaughter of a gulag victim, Bilocerkowycz has inherited a legacy of political oppression. But what does it mean when she discovers a missing page from her family's survival story—one that raises questions about her own guilt?

In these linked essays, Bilocerkowycz invites listeners to meet a swirling cast of post-Soviet characters, including a Russian intelligence officer who finds Osama bin Laden a few weeks after 9/11; a Ukrainian poet whose nose gets broken by Russian separatists; and a long-lost relative who drives a bus into the heart of Chernobyl. On Our Way Home from the Revolution muddles our easy distinctions between innocence and culpability, agency and fate.

©2019 Sonya Bilocerkowycz (P)2022 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

A personal look into a deeply political war

This book hits home. Not because I’m from Ukraine or have family there. Not because it’s in the news today. But because the author opens themselves up to something so deep and vital to the human experience. In a vulnerable look at Ukraine, you can’t help but read this book and think about your own heritage. It asks us all to recall the triumphs, the truths and the heartbreak that makes us who we are.