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yangyvonne 's review for:
The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar
by Robert Alexander
Leonka is an old man, widowed and about to die. He records his story of the Romanovs and how they were executed. As a 14 year old kitchen boy, he saw it all. And, at the end, he tells of helping to try and save the Czar's daughter, Grand Duchess Maria. When his own granddaughter, Kate, listens to the tape, she questions some of the story and goes in search of the truth. She finds out that her grandfather created the story of the kitchen boy who married a novice medical assistant. I reality, her grandfather was one of the guards involved in tricking the Romanovs and was assigned to shoot Maria. When she survived, he helped her, and married her - running to America and creating their new identities.
While everyone knows the fate of Czar Nikolai and his family, this book takes a very different approach to tell the story. While you expect the twist about Maria surviving and being the grandmother, you never think that Leonka was a Red, let alone the soldier assigned to kill her! I enjoyed the interspersed Russian phrases as well and the look into the Czar and Aleksandra's deep love for each other and how hard it was for them to accept that they were prisoners and no one was coming to rescue them. Their brutal deaths, on order of Lenin, is horrific to imagine and is captured perfectly in Leonka's story.
While everyone knows the fate of Czar Nikolai and his family, this book takes a very different approach to tell the story. While you expect the twist about Maria surviving and being the grandmother, you never think that Leonka was a Red, let alone the soldier assigned to kill her! I enjoyed the interspersed Russian phrases as well and the look into the Czar and Aleksandra's deep love for each other and how hard it was for them to accept that they were prisoners and no one was coming to rescue them. Their brutal deaths, on order of Lenin, is horrific to imagine and is captured perfectly in Leonka's story.