“A Biography of a Chance Miracle,” by Tanja Maljartschuk, translated by Zenia Tompkins. Kumamoto, Japan: Cadmus Press, 2018. 238 pp. ISBN: 978-4-908793-41-7 (paperback), $20.
The novel “A Biography of a Chance Miracle” tells the story of Lena, a young girl growing up in the bureaucracy-ridden and nationalistic fictional western Ukrainian city of San Francisco. An outcast due to her unwillingness to scorn everything Russian, her propensity for befriending forlorn creatures, her aversion to the status quo and her fear of living a meaningless life, Lena sets forth on a mission to defend the abused, be they canine or human. Armed with an arsenal of humor, stubbornness, chutzpah and no shortage of imagination, her successes are minimal but, in the process of trying to save San Francisco’s humanity, she may end up saving her own.