This is at once an actual memoir and an intensely felt love story. Set at the turn of the twentieth century and spread across the enormous canvas of Russia itself, Another Winter, Another Spring is a tale of love and loyalty tested against great hardship and suffering. It is the true story of a young woman of ease and privilege, her growing up amidst the Swedish aristocracy during the 1890s, her marriage to the son of a Russian general and her long journey through the maelstrom of Russia during the Revolution, a journey through the chaos of a war-torn land that thousands were fleeing. Following her husband across the continent, she is at the Northern Front when it collapses, and is imprisoned and taken to Moscow under the most extraordinary conditions.
With the skill of a natural storyteller, Louise de Kiriline Lawrence unfolds her past and the dramatic circumstances of her sweet first love. She evokes the opulent world of her early childhood culminating in her presentation to the Swedish court at the royal palace, her first days as a Red Cross nurse in a prisoner-of-war camp where she met her husband, the midnight sleigh ride that took her through the snows of a Russian winter in flight from enemy troops, her arrival in the Moscow railway station and her bewildering walk through a city gaunt and strangely silenced by war. Finally her desperate efforts to learn the fate of her imprisoned husband lead her to the cold halls of Soviet bureaucracy and the treachery of the new regime. And gradually, through the turmoil and tentative joy, she realizes her growing awe and love for the great vast reaches of a land that tempers her people with the harsh cruelty of her winters and the lavish tenderness of her springs.
This is more than the story of the Revolution; it is the story of a rare and determined love remembered. Another Winter, Another Spring is a vivid and intensely personal recollection of a woman's private confrontation with a madly public world, a journey of the heart and mind written with great sensitivity, character and insight.
"Another Winter, Another Spring reads like one of the most beautiful love stories ever written. It also reads as a most exciting adventure story in the vein of the best suspense writers. And it is at the same time a most poignant memoir of a remarkable life. It is a book so tender and touching and at the same time so exciting it was hard to put it down, once I had started reading it."
- H. Lampard, St. Catharines Standard
"She came to Canada with the memories of an aristocratic Swedish childhood, grueling experiences as a wartime Red Cross nurse, and a passionate marriage to a Russian army officer. She survived loneliness and heartbreak in the Russian Revolution and had lived with tragedy and famine and terror. But her books are filled with love."
- M. Ormrod, The North Renfrew Times
A trained nurse, Louise de Kiriline Lawrence ran the Dionne Quintuplets' nursery for a year, then married and moved to the Ontario woods. There she became interested in nature observation and through her own determination and effort became a world-renowned ornithologist, bird bander and writer.
