RED IS FOR ROSES: A Cold War Memoir

by Lisa Ann Varco, Pirincheva-Toteva Nikolova Vanya, Fernando Natasha (Editor)

Overview

Some decades ago, a man fled for his life swimming across the Danube River. Life behind the Iron Curtain was rife with pain and fear. Red seemed to paint swatches across moments in his life. Communism, love, heartbreak. Apples formed his early memory and way of life. Strawberries tore him away from his home in Bulgaria. Roses in his New York greenhouse helped heal wounds caused by life’s cruelties. As with her father, red also seemed to weave through Lisa’s life. Cranberries over Thanksgiving reignited the longing to find her family, placing this desire in God’s hands. Poppies bloomed amidst the revival of a newfound family. Cherries demonstrated the unfailing strength of Lisa’s father and how “what was once lost, was now found.” The last time Lisa saw her father, she was 11. Yet the yearning to see her family restored never waned. It took years until finally, a letter arrived in a language she couldn’t understand. Decades later, a leaf appeared on a genealogy website. Lisa discovered she had only scratched the surface of her family an ocean and a continent away. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781733099516
Publisher:	Lisa Varco
Publication date:	07/08/2019
Series:	978-1-7330995-4-7
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	156
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

'Lisa was born in 1967 in Buffalo, New York. After graduating from high school in her hometown, she studied Business Administration at Erie Community College - City Campus and The School of Management at the State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNYAB). She has worked in various roles as a Project Controls Specialist and Program Scheduler in the Consulting Engineering and Space and Defense industries. She resides with her husband and son in Buffalo, New York.
Vanya was born in 1960 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. After graduating from high school in her hometown, she studied librarianship and bibliography at the State Library Institute (now the University of Library Studies) in Sofia. She has worked as a librarian in the Processing Department and Catalogs of the Ivan Vazov National Library in Plovdiv (1986 - 2016). Since 2016, she has been the Head of the Library Center at the European Higher School of Economics and Management - Plovdiv.
Natasha Fernando is the founder of The BARN Chronicles, a company that specializes in capturing your memoir, it's about recognizing that your story deserves to be told. Words are indelible. So are you. Visit www.thebarnicles.org or email [e-mail] for more details - and find out what BARN stands for!

Table of Contents

DEDICATION V

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS VII

INTRODUCTION 1

PART I 3 

LIFE AS A BULGARIAN 3

Chapter 1. The Land Between Two Rivers 5

Chapter 2. Surviving the Escape 9

Chapter 3. Unsafe in the Village 13

Chapter 4. Seasons Come and Seasons Go 21

PART II 25 

LIFE AS AN AMERICAN 25

Chapter 5. The Immigrant 27

Chapter 6. City Living 31

Chapter 7. The Greenhouse Business 37

Chapter 8. In Search of My Dad 45

Chapter 9. An Unexpected Connection 51

Chapter 10. It’s a Small World 55

PART III 59 

JOURNEY TO BULGARIA 59

Chapter 11. Family Trees 61

Chapter 12. The Love of a Brother 67

Chapter 13. Journey to the Old World 73

Chapter 14. Safe in the Family’s Village 81

Chapter 15. Family Vacation 87

Chapter 16. Home Away from Home 103

Chapter 17. Culture Through Flowers 111

Chapter 18. Leaving the Village Behind 113

Epilogue 119

Conclusion 121

PART IV 125 

APPENDICES 125

ABOUT THE COVER PHOTO AND TITLE 137

INDEX 139

ABOUT THE AUTHORS 141