The Lost Year: A Survival Story of the Ukrainian Famine

*A National Book Award Longlist selection*

From the author of Nowhere Boy - called "a resistance novel for our times" by The New York Times - comes a brilliant middle-grade survival story that traces a harrowing family secret back to the Holodomor, a terrible famine that devastated Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s.

Thirteen-year-old Matthew is miserable. His journalist dad is stuck overseas indefinitely, and his mom has moved in his one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother to ride out the pandemic, adding to his stress and isolation.

But when Matthew finds a tattered black-and-white photo in his great-grandmother's belongings, he discovers a clue to a hidden chapter of her past, one that will lead to a life-shattering family secret. Set in alternating timelines that connect the present-day to the 1930s and the US to the USSR, Katherine Marsh's latest novel sheds fresh light on the Holodomor - the horrific famine that killed millions of Ukrainians, and which the Soviet government covered up for decades.

An incredibly timely, page-turning story of family, survival, and sacrifice, inspired by Marsh's own family history, The Lost Year is perfect for fans of Ruta Sepetys' Between Shades of Gray and Alan Gratz's Refugee.

Author: Katherine Marsh
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Published: 01/17/2023
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.92lbs
Size: 8.35h x 5.51w x 1.34d
ISBN: 9781250313607
Audience: Ages 9-12

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 4.8
Point Value: 11
Interest Level: Middle Grade
Quiz #/Name: 519855 / Lost Year


Award: National Book Awards - Nominee


Review Citation(s):
Bulletin of Ctr for Child Bks 12/01/2022
Kirkus Reviews 11/15/2022
Publishers Weekly 11/21/2022
Booklist 12/01/2022 pg. 124
Horn Book Magazine 03/01/2023 pg. 71

About the Author
Katherine Marsh is the Edgar Award-winning author of The Night Tourist, Nowhere Boy, The Twilight Prisoner, Jepp, Who Defied the Stars, and The Doors By the Staircase. Katherine grew up in New York and now lives in Washington, DC with her husband and two children.