A Mountain of Crumbs

When the children were hungry during the Russian Revolution, Elena Gorokhova's grandmother would break their bread into a mountina of crumbs to make a little seem like plenty.  In preschool Gorokhova learned about vranyo, a mutual understanding that everyone is pretending.  Vranyo seems to be the glue that holds her whole world together.

A Mountain of Crumbs is Gorokhova's memoir of growing up in the Leningrad during the cold war.  Beautifully written, this book takes us through familiar coming of age territory but is a setting where none of the stuff of childhood and adolesence (shoes, toys, bluejeans or books) is taken for granted. 

A Mountain of Crumbs is the Fall 2012 One Book One Community Read selection for Marquette.