When the Doves Disappeared

By Sofi Oksanen, translated by Lola M. Rogers

Alfred A. Knopf, 320 pp., $25.95

"When the Doves Disappeared" (Alfred A. Knopf, 320 pp., $25.95), set in 20th-century Estonia, made me scramble to get my bearings. I'd never encountered a scenario where the Nazi occupation was welcome, but that was the case for many Estonians.

Having suffered the 1940 Soviet annexation, during which thousands were jailed, executed or deported to Siberia, they saw the Germans as saviors, and hoped that once the war ended, their country would be returned to independence.

As you can guess, this is not a happy story.

Sofi Oksanen, a Finnish-Estonian novelist and playwright, moves between the war era and the 1960s, when Estonia was again squashed by the oppressive Soviet thumb. Two cousins, stalwart Roland and amoral, opportunistic Edgar, narrate, along with Juudit, Edgar's unfortunate wife.

Both men have deserted the Red Army, but while Roland goes underground to work for Estonian freedom, Edgar puts his chameleon-like talents to use to become an informant for the Nazis.

Juudit, abandoned by Edgar, tries to help Roland's cause, but finds herself swept into an affair with an SS officer. He gives her a luxurious lifestyle and, for the first time in her life, true love. She drowns any qualms of conscience in cocktails and drugs until Roland, his fiance murdered by the Germans, resurfaces in her life.

When he asks her help saving refugees, Juudit, a wonderfully drawn and complex character, can no longer suppress her loyalties.

Meanwhile, oily Edgar, with his own life-or-death secret to conceal, works his way up through the German ranks. When the narrative shifts 20 years forward, we meet him again, now flourishing as a Soviet apparatchik who writes propaganda and is more anxious than ever to hide his past. Given the chance to cement his position with the Communist Party, he doesn't hesitate to betray anyone in his path.

"When the Doves Disappeared" became an immediate best seller in Scandinavia. For ignorant Americans like me, the first pages can be rough going, and a quick cram session on Estonian history is recommended.

Translated from the Finnish, the prose is sometimes awkward but often powerfully evocative, especially in passages that reflect the countryside.

"She smelled like my land, like she was born in my land, like she would molder in my land . . ." Or again: "All around him, faces were growing taut and shrunken, day by day, like mushrooms drying in an oven." The last third of the book has the quick pace and plot twists of a literary thriller.

Given recent events in Crimea, many in tiny Estonia are again anxious. Their homeland and its brave, battered heart are well-served by this book.

Springstubb is a Cleveland Heights writer.