What was life like in the old country? Through the eyes of Lisa Cooper’s grandmother Pearl, we experience family life in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the context of pogroms, World War I, the Russian Revolution, and civil war. Pearl’s son recorded his mother’s memories, which give a lively sense of life and culture in the Pale of our ancestors.

Bio:

Lisa Cooper is a British writer, journalist and artist. While spending a year studying in the Soviet Union, she was able to locate cousins in Kiev (then part of the Soviet Union) using information from an old address book and a family tree. This encounter spurred her interest in family history. Her book A Forgotten Land, which had started out as her masters dissertation in Russian history, retells her grandmother’s stories of life in the Pale. Her Blog.

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