The Storks' Nest: Life and Love in the Russian Countryside | Laura L. Williams

The Storks' Nest: Life and Love in the Russian Countryside | Laura L. Williams | Love - very rarely does it happen with nothing else happening

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The Storks' Nest: ...

	The Storks' Nest: Life and Love in the Russian Countryside Laura L. Williams Fulcrum Publishing, 2008 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 8 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Drawn to Russia to work on conserving its extensive wilderness, Laura Williams shares the story of her life-changing move to the countryside, where she works on a remote nature reserve and falls in love with its director, Igor Shpilenok. Together they explore the wilderness in the Bryansk Forest surrounding their village of Chukhrai, encountering the elusive black stork, apprehending poachers, and raising a moose. Through the long winter, they cope with hardships, which Laura learns are nothing compared to those the villagers have experienced in the past century. City born and bred as a typical American, in four seasons Laura creates a home with nature and her neighbors in remote, rural Russia.

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A Simpler Yet Richer Side to Life

Laura Lynne Williams' book "The Stork's Nest: Life and Love in the Russian Countryside," is an inspiration! Every day I looked forward to reading it a little at a time to savor the author's experiences in Chukrai, Russia and getting a glimpse of a simpler yet richer side of life, where people and nature take precedence over things.

It is a love story that encompasses a passion for preserving the natural world, an immersion into the lifestyle and customs of the Russian people and of course, the romance between the author and her husband, Igor Shpilenok, himself an outstanding wildlife photographer and director of a protected nature reserve.

I highly recommend it to anyone interested improving the quality of their own lives!

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Love - very rarely does it happen with nothing else happening

Love - very rarely does it happen with nothing else happening, as romance novels wrongly lead people to believe. "The Stork's Nest: Life and Love in the Russian Countryside" is the story of Laura Lynne Williams, who made a trip to the hugely expansive wilderness of Russia where she sought to work for a nature reserve, but fell in love with a photographer called Igor. She soon began to call the Russian wilderness home. "The Stork's Nest: Life and Love in the Russian Countryside" is a charming story, highly recommended for any community library memoir collection.

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enchanting book

The Stork's Nest gave me a wonderful glimpse into life in an isolated part of Russia. The viewpoint of the author provided a useful lens to better understand this part of Russia. I grew up on a farm in an isolated area of Colorado, so I could relate to the villagers' need for self-sufficiency. And, of course, the growing love between Igor and Laura kept my interest, too.

A Proper Time Machine

Some readers may already be familiar with Laura Williams via her articles in Russian Life magazine. For those readers, The Stork's Nest will just add depth and background to a setting that you are already familiar with - rural village life in Chukrai in Western Russia.

For the unintiated, this book is something of a time-machine, into a past that exists only rural Russia and a handful of other remote undeveloped places in the world. It is a romance and a love-story as well, told rather tenderly by Ms. Williams, where her husband Igor Shpilenok plays a woodsman Marshall Dillon, figuring in the all-capable-leading-man role.

This book reminded me of my childhood, partially spent in rural Vermont, and memories of deep mud on dirt roads in spring, family gardens, water cisterns, root-cellars, wash-boards and wringers, and other aspects of an older life, a life where domestic work is a daily task and necessity, a life almost forgotten in the United States.

I highly recommend this book to anyone with a romantic streak or an interest in Russia. It may even inspire you to pull out old family photo albums and remember the lives of your grandparents or great-grandparents.

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a great afternoon read

Laura Williams' dawning into a life in the Russian countryside is beautiful and trenchant, and her skill as a writer hands quite an experience to us. Marvelous to read, Williams' ease of language and patient temperament leaves one wanting more. Appreciated as well is an unbuttered look at the Orthodoxy of rural Russia, sometimes startling and always moving. Pagan Russia never far from rural Russia, in Stork's Nest you meet the near mystical ordinaries that populate rural Russian village life, bountiful habitat and adventure, and copious homemade vodka. The book is plunged through and through with a simple, epic sketch of an author's awakening by a land older and vaster than her own. Included are a number of photos by photographer hubby Shpilenok, but it's Williams' finesse as wife and writer that settles his photographs into a plausible if not integral part of Stork's Nest. Their love story is improbable and tender, and it sets sail a vital memoir. If you love Russia, don't miss it.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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