Radiant as the Stars: A Novel
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Pub Date Aug 28 2026 | Archive Date Sep 11 2026
Sibylline Press | Sibylline Digital First
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Description
In April 1911, Jews escaping pogroms are fleeing to America, but 20-year-old Anna Reader, full of fierce conviction, is headed in the opposite direction— back to the Ukrainian shtetl from which her family fled six years earlier. She has decided to join her radical cousin Chava in the Jewish Labor Bund on the eve of the Russian Revolution, leaving behind her work in a Chicago sweatshop and the lover who jilted her.
Her warm reunion with her cousin is tainted by political intrigue. Anna is not fully trusted by the Jewish radicals she grew up with in Ukraine. She is given minor tasks, while Chava’s assignments become more dangerous. The threat of betrayal is constantly lurking. When Chava is arrested and imprisoned, Anna’s efforts to rescue her cousin further alienate her from her Bund comrades. When she is threatened with arrest by the Tsarists, Anna is undone, fighting for survival in a strife-torn land.
Available Editions
| EDITION | Ebook |
| ISBN | 9798897409235 |
| PRICE | $5.99 (USD) |
| PAGES | 340 |
Available on NetGalley
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Featured Reviews
Susan B, Reviewer
April 1911 - A story at the beginning of WWI and leading into WWII. Well researched. It told a lot of the world leading up to the wars. Highly recommend.
Cindy R, Reviewer
After Anna and her family immigrate to the US from their shtetl in Ukraine/Russia, they settle in Chicago. Anna cannot continue school and is forced to work in a sweatshop, which she contracts tuberculosis. After she is rehabilitated and jilted by a boy, she decides to go back to Ukraine and join her cousin, Chava, to work for the revolution. In 1911, at 20, Anna makes the voyage on her own. The book details her train trip where she has a romantic liaison with an artist and her political work in the shtetl and in Kiev.
This book tracks both Anna's personal story and the historical events that preceded the Russian revolution, including acts of antisemitism and pogroms in Ukraine. The book is well written and highly engaging, especially the second half that takes place in Kiev. While some of the book is based on the diaries of the author's grandmother, most of the political aspects of the plot are fictional since the grandmother did not include those events in her diary.
Even as historical fiction, the book provides a really strong overview of the struggles of Jewish revolutionaries in The Bund as they work to build a better world.
I was provided an ARC by the publisher via NetGalley.
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