Dancing Under the Red Star

June 19, 2006
Margaret Werner (1921-1997), an American citizen living in the Soviet Union, was 17 years old when the secret police came for her father, whom she never saw again. Left destitute, she and her mother fought extreme cold and near starvation, taking whatever jobs they could find. Seven years later, in 1943, the police came for Margaret. Accused of espionage, she was sentenced to 10 years' hard labor. Tobien, her son, describes the appalling privations and backbreaking work in her Siberian prison camp, but also the prisoners' strong friendships and the dance troupe the women created with their guards' approval. A recurring theme is Margaret's growth in faith, culminating in her conversion to evangelical Christianity in 1991. Tobien tells his mother's story simply and chronologically, as if to a young audience. His use of a first-person point-of-view seems gratuitous, since he rarely explores Margaret's inner life. Despite the ever-present backdrop of Stalinist Russia, WWII and postwar communism in Russia and East Germany, this is less an analysis of cold war politics than a tribute to a woman who survived unimaginable horrors with her optimistic spirit intact.

March 27, 2006
Margaret Werner (1921-1997), an American citizen living in the Soviet Union, was 17 years old when the secret police came for her father, whom she never saw again. Left destitute, she and her mother fought extreme cold and near starvation, taking whatever jobs they could find. Seven years later, in 1943, the police came for Margaret. Accused of espionage, she was sentenced to 10 years' hard labor. Tobien, her son, describes the appalling privations and backbreaking work in her Siberian prison camp, but also the prisoners' strong friendships and the dance troupe the women created with their guards' approval. A recurring theme is Margaret's growth in faith, culminating in her conversion to evangelical Christianity in 1991. Tobien tells his mother's story simply and chronologically, as if to a young audience. His use of a first-person point-of-view seems gratuitous, since he rarely explores Margaret's inner life. Despite the ever-present backdrop of Stalinist Russia, WWII and postwar communism in Russia and East Germany, this is less an analysis of cold war politics than a tribute to a woman who survived unimaginable horrors with her optimistic spirit intact.

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2006
The bold claim of the subtitle notwithstanding, this is an exciting story and an overlooked piece of history. Margaret Werner, along with her mother, Elizabeth, and father, Carl, was among a group of Americans who emigrated to Russia in 1932 as part of a Ford Motor Company plan to assist the Soviet Union. Margaret was 11 years old when the family settled there, and her father soon became foreman of the tool and die department of the city's auto factory. He was arrested in 1938 and the family never saw him again. Margaret was arrested in 1945 on the trumped-up charges of treason and anti-Soviet propaganda. She spent the next decade in the "gulag archipelago," mostly in northern Siberia. After her release, she married, had a son, eventually was allowed to leave for East Germany, escaped to West Germany, and finally returned to the U.S. nearly 30 years after she first left for the Soviet Union. Margaret died in 1997. Her son wrote this book and it makes a compelling "memoir."(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)