Subterranean Towers

About the Book

A man sits on a stool for sixteen hours a day. He must not talk, even to himself. Every five minutes the piercing eye of his jailor scours his tomb-like cell. This, he has been told, will be his life for the next twenty-five years. How will he keep from going mad?

A child mysteriously loses her father at the age of five. She grows up among whispers, rumors, accusations. How will she protect her fragile ego against a hostile world?

At the height of a brilliant career, general and Vice-Minister of Defense Ion Eremia, Nicolae Ceausescu's archrival, risked everything in order to tell the truth about communism. He was sentenced in 1959 to twenty-five years in prison while his actress wife and young children were persecuted and ostracized. Eventually, Ion's family emigrated to America and was only reunited with him in 1989 after the Romanian revolution. Was Ion's act of principled courage worth the heavy price he and his family paid? Subterranean Towers: A Father-Daughter Story weaves together the contrasting voices of the father in prison and the young daughter growing up in the greater prison outside to explore the meaning of heroism in the modern world.

About the Author

Dr. Irina Bragin has taught English at UCLA, the University of Judaism, and currently, Shalhevet High in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Reader's Digest, and Glencoe McGraw/Hills's edition of Solzhenitsyn's One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich with Related Readings.