The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova

I grabbed this book off the New Book Shelf at my local bookstore before I even knew what it was about.  You see, I LOVED The Historian.  Loved it!  I read The Swan Thieves too, and it was ok, but I mean I loved The Historian!!!!

Then I read the flap.  Huh.  An American in Bulgaria...something about a bag of human ashes she accidentally ends up with...and her chase across the country to find the family that left it behind...honestly I was not enthralled.  But you know, Sally the Owner is looking at me and there I was at the counter so, I took the plunge.

First of all, that flap writer should be fired.

This is a fascinating, if slow, story.  Alexandra (she now goes by her middle name for some unexplained reason) is determined to find the young man and elderly couple who left their bag at her feet as she helped them get into a taxi in Sofia, Bulgaria.  She tries to do the right thing and track them down, and luckily for her she teams up with the first person she meets - a taxi driver with a past. She trusts him (don't do this, daughters of mine - Alexandra was LUCKY and plus, this is FICTION!) but remains cautious, and they are off on their odyssey which somehow only takes a few days but spans the entire novel - oh yeah, because of the flashbacks to the life of the man whose ashes they protect.  These flashbacks may be the best parts of this novel.  Yes, it is a story we've heard before - unwarranted arrests, labor camps, corrupt officials - but by focusing on one man and his story/family, you learn how it also affected Bulgaria's people too.

There are a couple of unanswered secondary questions here, but you do get a good feel for the characters and how they build relationships despite cultural, language and lifestyle differences.  I found Bobby the taxi driver to be most interesting.  There is one nice twist at the end that I did not see coming, and Kostova's writing is as good as ever - subtle, lyrical at times, and in this case not stressful but more dreamlike.  It was not necessarily a book I "could not put down" due to this slower pace.  But it was a great story and full of love of all kinds - a hint of the romantic, but mostly focused on the love of family, be it by blood or by choice.