Coming Out of the Ice

This astonishing true story is the tale of a young American man who was sent to the Soviet Union with his parents by the Ford Motor Company to set up an auto plant. He was eventually thrown into Soviet prisons and could not return to America until 45 years later. During his life in and out of Russian prisons, he met and fell in love with a beautiful Russian gymnast who followed him into exile and lived with him and their child for a year in Siberia, in a cave chopped out under the ice. Theirs is the compelling story of a romance destined to thrive under even the most desperate conditions. It was 1938 when Victor Herman was inexplicably thrown into prison, after he had become a celebrity in the Soviet Union, having won acclaim as "the Lindbergh of Russia" for his flying and world-record-breaking parachute jumps. But what happened to him was a common nightmare during the Stalin years: those who survived imprisonment and torture were sent north to hard labor in the icy forests and mines, or into exile. Victor was one of the few who survived. What kept him alive for 18 years was an overwhelming, unshakable belief in his own invincibility, and the desire to return to America and tell his story. After Stalin's death he was "pardoned" and allowed to live quietly until he began petitioning to go back to America. Years of persistence despite endless frustrations paid off when, in 1976, Victor Herman was finally allowed to come home. This eloquent, unflinching memoir recounts a scandalous and little-known episode in Russian-American history. It gives vivid testimony to the boundless faith of a human being who refused to be defeated. - Jacket flap.