Caught in the Current takes the reader on a magical mystery tour of Eastern and Western Europe during the summer of 1970, a tumultuous period of free love, equal rights demonstrations, and Vietnam antiwar protests in America, but an equally revolutionary period in Alec's life. Raised in Chicago as Ukrainian, Alec is caught between identities--is he American or Ukrainian? His personal beliefs are pushed to the limit as he undertakes a risky mission to learn about political dissidents in Soviet-dominated Ukraine. Detained, interrogated, and finally deported from the Soviet Union, Alec seeks refuge in earthquake-ravaged Banja Luka where he begins to see the world from a different perspective. Questioning himself and his values, Alec finally finds his anchor in Stefi, his girlfriend from Chicago, who helps him discover his true identity.

Caught in the Current: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Daniel Hryhorczuk

United States

Langdon Street Press

During Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity in the winter of 2013-14, Dr. Natalka Slovyanka, a beautiful, young psychiatrist from Donbas, tries to cure her mysterious patient of his ''philosophical intoxication.'' Telesyk is a storyteller who hears voices in the wind. His mind drifts between the immuring reality of the psikhushka and an imaginary world inhabited by witches, nymphs, and dragons. He engages the other patients in a fairy tale of the quest for a horse that eats burning embers and drinks fire, a myth that parallels Ukraine's search for its identity. Both patient and therapist embark on their own quests--Telesyk, to free himself from the prison of his mind and Natalka, to escape the dark secrets of her past. As different as East and West, they realize that they must unite to slay the family of dragons that are threatening their existence. Myth and Madness blends magical realism with historical events on the Maidan to tell the story of a nation's quest for its identity.

Myth and Madness: A Novel

Genre Fiction

North Loop Books

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Books by Daniel Hryhorczuk