Growing up, Lida Suchy listened to her parents’ tales of the Ukrainian homeland, which they fled because of Soviet persecution during World War II. At night, her father, Zenon, told her bedtime stories about Baba Yaga, the Ukrainian witch, but also tales from his summers spent among the Hutsul culture, deep in the Carpathian Mountains of western Ukraine. There was even a touch of romance to her parents’ first moments in exile: Zenon met his wife-to-be, Irene, when he pulled her through the window of the last train leaving the station. Together, they watched the sunset.
“These stories had a magical place in my mind,” said Ms. Suchy, who was born in 1960 and raised in North Dakota and upstate New York. “I was really interested in confronting the reality of what was there with myths he had created in my head about what home was like.”
