Andris, Where are You? From Latvia to New Zealand

In the rural town in NZ that I grew up in, I was vaguely aware of the photography shop owned and run by Andris Apse, as as I grew older he became a well known name in the landscape photography field publishing many photography books. I was around the same age as his children, one slightly older and one around my age, one younger. I suspect that around the same time I moved away from the town, so did Andris and his family.

I am not sure where I picked up this book, but I took it off my shelf recently and figured I would read a little and if it didn't strike a chord with me I would just move it on to clear up some space.

This turned out to be a fascinating book. By his own admission, this book telling the story of a Latvian family, the impact of World War II on them, and a part of their family emigrating to New Zealand as refugees could have been written about any number of families, and they didn't consider themselves so unique. I am not sure myself whether that fine line of knowing these people very vaguely made it more interesting to me or whether it would have been just as engaging had I no knowledge of them.

I will outline only the basics, as it is a story with various twists and turns, but before doing so I would add that I learned a lot about Latvia - a place I have travelled through between Lithuania and Russia, in around 2005. I don't know that I scratched far below the surface on my few weeks there, but this book did a good job of explaining the fractured relationship Latvia had with Russia, with Latvians fighting for, and then against Russians (and likewise against and then for the Germans).

Around the first third of the book explains the life of Andris Apse's father Voldermars. He recorded his time in the Latvian Army, then the Russian Army, and finally the German Army in diaries. He was at times very lucky to avoid major injury, while many around him were killed, or more perplexing, were removed and exiled to Siberia and other places by the Russians. Voldermars was a prisoner of war in both Germany and later Russia, and only a year after the birth of their son Andris, his wife gave him up for dead - either killed in battle or dead in a Russian gulag. Likewise Voldermars believed his wife and son were also killed in the war.

The opportunity to emigrate as refugees was offered to Kamilla and her young son, to New Zealand - a place they knew desperately little about, and the second part of the book explains how they set about making a new life for themselves.

After the breakup of the USSR in the early 1990s Kamilla and Andris discovered that Voldermars was still alive, and living back in Latvia. Then the opportunity arose for Andris to meet his father again after 46 years, and for Kamilla to meet again the man she had married on the last day of 1942. The tentative communication, followed by an eventual trip to Latvia fill out the balance of the book.

At times painfully sad, at others uplifting, but I found it an engaging read from start to finish.
4 stars