Book: Teri M. Brown

A Tale of Three Generations

Calabash Author Spins Stor y of Ukraine

By Joan Leotta

This year I’ve read more than thirty novels and works of nonfiction, and Sunflowers Beneath the Snow, a saga of three generations of women written by Calabash’s own Teri M. Brown, is the best book I’ve read this year.

Brown weaves her tale around their lives in Ukraine and the journey that one of them, Ionna, makes to the United States. The characters, especially the three primary females, are well-defined. You will not want to put the book down until you’ve finished this compelling story.

The tale weaves together a Ukrainian rebel and three generations of women who bear the consequences. Betrayal and political upheaval are handed down the generations. The story explores the tenacity of women in grueling circumstances who experience all the good things life has to offer: compassion, joy, love, faith, and wonder.

Written before the current war in Ukraine, the setting reflects a

A remembered snippet of a story inspired Calabash author Teri M. Brown to weave a tale of three genera ons, set in Ukraine. The book was wri en before the current war in Ukraine but it reflects the pressures of life and poli cs that have endured there for many years.

relationship with Russia that wants to subsume Ukraine and wipe out its individualistic culture. It offers insights into the conflict now erupting and reveals ways in which women assert their self-worth and discover how resilient and powerful they can be.

The Path to a Novel

Although she wanted to become a fiction writer since childhood,

Brown’s own path took her first to an education and business writing. It was not until she divorced in 2017 that she turned to her dream, fiction writing. Upon winning the First Annual Anita Bloom Ornoff Award for Inspirational Short Story for a piece about her grandfather, she began writing in earnest.

As the recipient of a grant to write at North Carolina’s Writer-in-Residence program at Weymouth, she began Sunflowers Beneath the Snow. The story was inspired by a snippet of a story told to her by a friend.

“I wrote 50,000 words there, edited it in 2018 and then, after a tandem bicycle ride across the country for Toys for Tots with my current husband in 2020, I put the book into the hands of Atmosphere Press and then expanded it by another 30,000 words.

“Sunflowers was published in 2022. That bike ride helped me understand that I had the ability to do anything I set my mind to do, even at age 58,” Brown says.

“Ionna’s desire to write is what I wish mine had been at her age. It is what I felt at 55! I identify more with Yevt – her feelings of postpartum depression and empty nesting were things I experienced in some form.”

Brown is a wife, mother, grandmother, and author who loves word games, reading, bumming on the beach, taking photos, singing in the shower, playing bridge, and mentoring others – especially youth and women who are having trouble discovering their worth.

The book won an Amazon 2022 Readers’ Favorite Five-Star Award and a 2022 Historical Fiction Company Five-Star “Highly Recommended” Award.

The mely new book Sunflowers Beneath the Snow by Calabash author Teri M. Brown leads readers on a journey through three genera ons in Ukraine. The book is available as a Kindle book or paperback on Amazon.com.

available on Amazon for $7.99 on Kindle and $18.99 in paper. Learn more about this talented woman and her work at www.terimbrown.com.