This week, our hearts are with Vera, our next book’s Ukrainian heroine and an important force for good–in the book and in real life.

We were just finishing up our fourth book when Russia declared war on Ukraine.

In the book, Vera is an assistant mayor and Bash’s grandmother from Ukraine. Her strength, goodness, smarts, empathy, cooking skills and talent for delivering moving lectures are important influences on daily life in a town called Woof-Woof Nation (a name created by Vera and Ally, Bash’s sister and the town’s mayor.). Along with Ally, Vera institutes daily holidays, changes the state animal and creates a loving, effective way to help people who have gone astray. After a lecture from Vera and a kiss from golden retriever Lucy, some of the book’s characters become forces for good, just like Vera.

Vera is based on the real Vera, an immigrant from Ukraine. When Michael was two or three, we met Vera at a play group near our house. She is the grandmother of Michael’s good friends, Levko and Lukyan, and the mother of our friend Tatiana.

Vera and Michael hit it off, and when Michael was six or so, Vera announced that she was Michael’s grandmother. She has taken that role very seriously, caring for him when I (Lisa) am busy, cooking him home-made pizza and cookies, giving him holiday and birthday gifts and most important, showering him with love and kindness. She also teaches him about what it was like growing up in Ukraine, delivering passionate lectures that always begin with, “In my country…” Some of these lectures appear in our books .

Vera grew up in Soviet-occupied Ukraine, in the village of Cherkasy. She never met her father and grew up not even knowing his name. To this day, she still doesn’t know; he died in the Second World War. As a member of the Ukrainian army, he had also fought against the Soviets. His political views could have meant that her entire family would be sent to a Gulag camp, she said.

People who were in the Ukrainian army were getting sent to Sibera or prison, she told me during an interview for The Immigrant Story.

Because Vera’s mom wasn’t a member of the Communist Party, she received no pension and had to work low-level jobs to make ends meet. Every morning Vera’s mother rose at dawn to walk into town and fuel the hospital’s wood boiler before the doctors arrived. Before leaving the house each morning, she made bread for her three children and braided Vera’s hair while she slept.

When Vera turned six, her mother convinced the local teacher to let Vera attend school, in part because the bright young girl demanded it. Conditions were dismal. “The school was half-broken, only one big room. We had one long table and there was fourteen children, different ages,” said Vera. The classroom had only one bucket of water for all the students. A shared mug was attached to the water pot by a chain because the school was afraid that the students would steal it.

When Vera was six, the widow next door stole Vera’s family’s goat. The neighbor hoped to get arrested so her children would be in government care and would have access to food and clothing. The neighbor’s plan worked, and her kids went to a government school.

Ukraine at the time was rife with sad stories like this. Vera and her family members were always hungry, she says. To help keep her children fed, Vera’s mother planted a special kind of edible grass, as well as sugar beets.

“They would give us a ticket for one loaf of bread for one week,” Vera recalled. “When I was very young, I went at night and stayed in the long line to get bread.” She wrapped herself in scarves and lay in the dirt to hold her place in line.

After graduating, Vera worked in a shoe store, married, divorced, and became a single working mom. At night, after putting her children to bed, she often knit and sewed clothing to make extra money. She did this in the bathroom because she didn’t want to wake her children.

When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, Vera lost all her savings: $10,000. “Most Ukrainians lost all their money,” she explained. “After the separation [dissolution of the Soviet Union], Russian banks did not give Ukrainians their money.”

Vera’s youngest child, Tatiana, left Ukraine to visit an exchange student and ended up staying and attending Yale University. After Tatiana married and had her first child, Levko, Vera moved to Portland to help with her grandchild and became a U.S. citizen.

You can read the entire story about Vera, She is a Girl-Power Grandma.

Vera now volunteers for her church and babysits to make money to send to Ukrainian soldiers. At the beginning of the COVID crisis, she sewed face masks and donated them to health care workers, the county and the homeless.

During this week’s crisis, Vera’s daughter, Tatiana, has served as a leader in the Ukrainian community. You can listen to an interview with her here.

This week, our hearts are with Vera, Tatiana and all Ukrainians.

Please watch Michael dedicate our last book to Vera: