Danielle Leavitt, By the Second Spring Seven Lives and One Year of the War in Ukraine, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, May 2025.

Thank you, NetGalley, for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.

Danielle Leavitt’s enterprise is an important part of recognising Ukrainians as other than ‘faceless war people.’ In her introduction she makes an important beginning toward achieving this purpose by describing the Ukrainian people she has met through living in Ukraine for part of each year since she was twelve years old. Until she began this book, where she records the information from seven Ukrainian’s diaries, her recall was of their humour, folk songs, ‘selling lingerie in underground walkways’ and, one of their pleasures, strolling. Leavitt spent a year assembling information from Ukrainians who wrote diaries, some spasmodically, others more consistently, of their experiences in the first year of the war.

Leavitt uses the diary entries from seven of these authors. Anna is eighteen and a police cadet; Maria is in her mid-twenties from Mariupol whose husband was defending the city during this period; Polina was living in America and returned to Ukraine with her American husband to help; Tania runs a pig farm and remains in her village during the invasion; Vitaly owned a coffee shop near Kyiv; Volodymyr was an engineer at Chernobyl and became a writer and film maker in the 1980s; and Yulia is a middle aged woman, skilled in handicrafts, from a small town in Donetsk.

The book is in five parts, following the seasons from the first winter to the second spring. Each story combines the Ukrainian diarist’s individual account and the judicious introduction of events around that account. For example, events in Vitaly’s life, before and after the outbreak of war are combined with an account of the historic relationships between Ukraine and Russia. This makes excellent reading, particularly for those who know little of Ukrainian and Russian history. At the end of the first part of Vitaly’s story, he has opened his coffee shop, an accomplishment based on his financially successful recycling business. Maria’s story resonates with its domestic detail, and then the plunge into the effects of the invasion. Here, too there is a political background provided, so again there is a rich amalgam of domestic and personal information and the political context to this new example of Russian intransigence.

Part 5 begins with Tania’s story of the liberation of her area, but the never-ending deprivation of living in what had been a war zone. At the same time, there is evidence that life proceeds with work and domestic tasks vying for attention and energy. Yulia’s narrative is an amazing insight into the way in which she began rehabilitation after being fitted with a prosthetic leg. Polina and her husband continue with their aid projects. But at the same time the narrative considers the wider population, the despair, and at the same time proceeding with lives that at times ignore the war.

It is the weaving together of the personal and domestic, the political and historical, war and yet the sometimes-ordinary way in which people lead their lives, which makes this book a truly valuable read. Leavitt’s interviews with the Ukrainians whose narratives are central to the book, together with interviews with their families and friends, and moving further afield, anecdotes from other Ukrainians, achieves her purpose. She gives Ukrainians, their lives prewar and during the invasion import, they become known. Providing an historical context is another feat that Leavitt has accomplished with skill – it becomes accessible. Leavitt has produced an important work, maintaining Ukraine and Ukrainians in the public eye as so much of the story fades from the television screens. I found By the Second Spring a heartrending and an inspiring read.

This is a book that needs to go to your must read pile. Just, wow!

This book opened my eyes to the people of Ukraine and what they are facing that felt personal, sad, and hopeful. I could have listened to more of each of the people written about in the book for longer. What they are going through is so tough, and although I can’t understand what it is to go through war, this made me more aware of what is going on.

When an invasion is knocking on your door, do you flee or fight? As the fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance, postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute Danielle Leavitt examines the realities of war for seven individuals starting from the first winter and now entering the second spring. (Although, Leavitt argues, the war “really started” in 2014 when Ukraine asserted its independence from Russia.) Vitaly had just opened his own coffee shop when a rocket split his apartment in two. Maria is terrified for the life of her baby and her husband, who felt it was his duty to join the resistance. Through the perspectives of Vitaly, Yulia, Tania, Maria, Anna, Polina and their families, Leavitt is really telling the story of more than 100 years of Ukrainian history and dissent.

Wow, this is the book to read if you need a fast-track workshop in how to package several decades worth of tumultuous social, cultural and political change--the amount of exposition that would scare off all but the geekiest of readers--into digestible human stories with vivid, conflicted, memorable characters.

Ostensibly, the book follows 7 Ukrainian men and women through the first year of the war, none of them heroic or superhuman, just normal people under abnormal circumstances. People losing their home, sometimes for the second time; people losing their entire life's work and trying to find a foothold to continue; people feeling complicated human feelings instead of the ready-made heroic cliches. For example, I found really touching the story of a young mother whose husband joined the army, fought at Azovstal in the encircled Mariupol, and was taken prisoner by the Russians. The defenders of Mariupol gave the rest of Ukraine a chance by tying up significant Russian military forces and winning the rest of the country some time to regroup and gather strength, but on the human level, of course, it can be much muddier: "And she still burned with anger that Leonid had abandoned her." Showing this picture of Ukrainians as regular people and not denizens of some other realm where war and self-sacrifice is normal was one of the stated goals of the book:

<blockquote><i>In popular understanding, Ukrainians can become one-dimensional characters— either desperate victims or nearly superhuman heroes, rebuffing Russian aggression and stunning the world with their courageous will to resist. Both characterizations have validity, but on their own they fail to adequately describe the people and society [...] In this book, I seek to know them not as war people or superheroes, but as mere humans confronted with what was for many the unimaginable.</i></blockquote>

But also, these individual biographies are the scaffolding for showing all the transformations that Ukraine underwent since it regained its independence in 1991: the economically and politically fraught 1990s, the return of organized religions, traditional and new, the language debates, etc., all wonderfully woven into the narrative. It shows just how far we've come from a country that was deeply traumatized, vulnerable and uncertain in its identity to a country with a robust civic society, a wonderful knack for grassroots self-organizing movements and a solid sense of a shared story and future.

Additionally, the contemporary chapters are interspersed with the historical plot line about the reburial of Vasyl Stus, a wonderful poet who was arrested by the Soviets for his literary and human rights work, died in the camps in Russia in 1985, and was reburied in Kyiv in 1989, with his funeral becoming the largest Ukrainian manifestation since 1917. (You can read more about Vasyl Stus <a href="https://www.londonukrainianreview.org/posts/shards-of-our-pain-poems-by-stus">here</a>.) Vasyl Stus' state-provided defence lawyer, Medvedchuk, essentially worked for the prosecution, claiming that “All of Stus’s crimes deserve punishment.” Some fifty years later, Medvedchuk, a pro-Russian politician, was sent to Russia in exchange for many Ukrainian PoWs from Azovstal (not the husband of the book's protagonist though).

But ultimately, I'd recommend reading it not for the knowledge about Ukraine: read it for you. We now see that the democratic world is impotent and unwilling to stand up for its values. It's been playing nice and nurturing authoritarian regimes worldwide. So wherever you are, whoever you are, the world is heading for the darker times, and your future might hold things that are unimaginable now; Ukraine just happened to have front-row seats for this shit show, and you don't yet know which row you personally are in. You won't know what you'll do until the unimaginable comes, but start getting used to the thought that anything is possible, and anything is survivable (until it isn't), and sometimes, if you are lucky, survivable with dignity. Read this not in the spirit of "oh, those quaint peoples in those quaint lands with their quaint habit of dying horrible deaths" but as a survival guide (and, if that's not an experience you are interested in having--1 out of 10, do not recommend--vote accordingly and maybe tell your politicians that appeasing authoritarian regimes has never been a good strategy, ta).

P.S. Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute had a wonderful conversation with the author: you can watch it <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrzA5TnSLZs">here</a>

If you've played any fantasy RPGs, you've probably played one in which farmers and shopkeepers are suddenly overrun by menacing orcs, and their homes, farms and livelihoods are destroyed. As the character, you pick up a rusty sword and fight the invaders, which are under orders from some distant evildoer. This is pretty much the situation that unfolded in Ukraine, and several people who have been living through the chaos and destruction tell their stories. They are Anna, Vitaly, Maria, Volodymyr, Yulia, Oleg, Polina, John, Tania.

Some chose to fight in the early days or later. Some chose to flee or stayed at home with family until they had to evacuate. Some came to Ukraine from America to help run a centre for refugees. And one man, who sorted recycling until he could set up his coffee shop, then saw his apartment building smashed by ballistics, did it all again. He noticed people spray painting on the wall opposite his new shop window. This picture of a kid using martial arts to throw a bigger opponent was by an artist, but he'd never heard of Banksy. Now he has. Our world has grown smaller and more connected.

The author, a professor from Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, uses the background of each person to take us through the history of Ukraine, from Cossack horsemen to a thriving grain and materials exporter. We learn about the Soviet-caused famine which killed four million people in the grain basket.

Continued on Goodreads.

It’s a riveting story that choked me up! 


This is the story of a few people who recount the journey of their lives through the war times. Their journey outlines their grit as well as helplessness.
The book will lead you to see how the world easily turns blind and apathetic towards the pain of other people.

How warring nations embark on a journe that turns them into soulless people with cruel political agendas and strategies and ambition to destroy the other. 

For what actually? A set of man-made beliefs? Beliefs which may not thrive even in days to come!


The stories of these people have left an indelible mark on my soul. I pray for their lives ahead and that they find peace in days that are ahead. 

This book has hit my soul with a longing I really don't understand myself.

Gratitude does not come easy! 
Stories like these change your perspectives.

This book is one of those things that have taught me gratitude.  

I am beyond grateful to the author and the people who have shared thier lives with the world through this book.

Indeed war is horrendous!

BY THE SECOND SPRING: SEVEN LIVES AND ONE YEAR OF THE WAR IN UKRAINE by Danielle Leavitt is a unique ground-level look at the conflict from multiple perspectives.

In BY THE SECOND SPRING, the author provides what she promises in the title: seven people's stories of how the war mixes up plans, uproots families and still, within its turmoil and confusion, offers hope for the future. By studying diverse characters- some young, some middle-aged, some of older age - the author finds the feature that brings these people together, which is their love for Ukraine. These individuals could have been the typical representatives of the oppressed minority Vladimir Putin likes to mention: native Russian speakers, many from Eastern and Southern Ukraine, some struggling financially. At the beginning of February 2022, Vitaly opened a coffee shop in Borodyanka near Kyiv. After many years of hard labor, Tania and her husband Viktor, as well as Yulia and her husband Oleg, could finally enjoy relative prosperity. Anna's family had been in survival mode since their escape from Luhansk in 2014. Polina and her husband John lived in LA and were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Maria and Leonid just became parents to David in Mariupol. Nevertheless, none of them supported the intruders, and almost all of them switched to Ukrainian in their everyday lives in protest.

The book's tone in describing the events doesn't rise to the level of pure glorification of the Ukrainian resistance in the face of Russian aggression. On the other hand, the author, being guided by decency and common sense, sometimes softens hatred toward everything Russian that has prevailed in the war depiction.

BY THE SECOND SPRING may also suit those readers who don't want to delve into the Ukrainian-Russian complicated relationship by reading academic books. Intertwined with personal stories come snippets of the historical background, crucial for understanding the current situation.

As the third anniversary of the outbreak of hostilities approaches and ordinary people, overwhelmed with their concerns, are tired of hearing about the war on the news, it is important to remind them that the war isn't only about abstract politics. War doesn't distinguish between the good and the bad people. It may come to anybody. Anytime. Anywhere.

I received an advance review copy through Netgalley, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.