There is a lot to like about Elliott Holt’s novel, You are One of Them. I was hooked by the title – a play on the Russian term “svoi chelovek” one of us, which had been so important to Vera and me. In the Cold War atmosphere, we Americans and Russians did not see our commonality, but our differences. It was “us versus them.” Had the title not captured me, the first sentence would have, “The first defector was my sister.”
Unlike our book, this is a novel and reminiscent of my favorite young adult books. Sarah has her own angst within her family and feels like an outcast until she meets Jenny, the best friend that she idealizes. Like Alla and Vera, the friendship of these two girls is also rocky and a bit competitive. Terrified of nuclear war and convinced of her own superpower of persuasion, ten-year-old, Sarah convinces...
You had to be in Russia in the '70s to believe it, and if you were there, this happened to you too - forming deeper friendships in less time than you would have ever believed possible. In Jewish Luck, I alluded to "the other friends," the group that Vera deemed unsavory. Here is the story, the prequel to meeting Vera.
On my second day in Leningrad, I dragged my friend, Robyn off to the "Museum of Atheism and Religion", housed in the beautiful semicircular Kazanski' Sobor, an Orthodox church in a previous life. Behind us stood two Scandinavian-looking men - one had twinkling blue eyes, long blond hair and a bushy blond beard. Except for his blue jean jacket and the warmth of his smile, he could have stepped out of the pages of a Tolstoy novel. The other appeared more ragged and seemed more likely to have stepped out of an... 
