Inspiration for Out Of Ukraine
My novel “Out of Ukraine” is based on my true story of accompanying my son to Ukraine to pick up his daughter. He and his wife had used a surrogate in Ukraine because it was a third of the cost of using one in the United States. There were a handful of other countries that offered surrogacy, but there were more hoops to jump through in those countries and the medical care in Ukraine was known to be superior. We were actually there in February 2021 and although we were dealing with COVID and it was bitter cold, we did not have to escape the Russian invasion as the characters in the book do because that happened in February 2022.
The COVID epidemic was only about a year old when we went there and flying was still a major ordeal. We had to be tested before going to the airports and wear a mask throughout the whole time we were on the plane and in the airports. All the airport restaurants were closed and when our return flight was canceled, we weren’t put up in a hotel overnight because they wouldn’t let anyone leave the airport. My granddaughter was five weeks old and we were stuck in the Frankfurt airport, having to wear a mask 24-7 and worrying about the baby getting COVID. There were also delays getting the paperwork necessary to take her home. DNA test, birth certificate, and passport for her would have taken weeks to get, but the surrogacy company helped a lot. There’s nothing like a bottle of wine given to the right person in authority.
When we were in Ukraine, there were many days that we couldn’t leave the apartment with the baby because it was less than twenty degrees. I had just gotten over breaking my shoulder after a fall, so I was afraid of walking on the snow and ice. There were still regulations in place keeping restaurants closed in Kiev, but we were able to take out meals and get a taste of Ukrainian food. Luckily we were close enough to downtown Kiev and a park and many fascinating buildings that when we could walk outside, we had much to see and do. But as a writer, I get inspiration and ideas from talking to people, and we were still forced to keep distance from others. Of course, there was a language difficulty anyway because Ukrainian and English are so different. And our experience there was that very few people spoke English as they might in other European countries. Thank goodness for the Google Translator app.
All of this was an interesting experience, but I didn’t think it was enough for a book. When Russia invaded Ukraine a year later, however, I read amazing stories about people escaping Ukraine, including those who were picking up babies born through surrogacy, and it inspired me to write the novel. Researching is always a large part of every novel I write, even when I use none or very little of what I learned. For example, in my first two books, “Venice Beach” and “The Columbarium,” my character, Jed, had escaped from Jonestown as a child. I did an enormous amount of research: watched documentaries and read a couple of books. I felt that I couldn’t understand Jed well enough if I didn’t know as much as possible about Jonestown. In “Out of Ukraine” I had to research as much or more, but at least I had been there and felt like I could make it realistic.
There were several articles about couples that had been unable to pick up their babies because they couldn’t get into the country. There were also articles about people stuck in the country, unable to leave. There was one particular California couple, however, who had escaped with their baby and it was their
experience that gave me the backdrop for writing “Out of Ukraine.” I saw them interviewed on television about their harrowing escape at the start of the war, though the story I wrote is not the same as theirs. Most of the book is fiction, but there was enough out there in the media to give me ideas. For example, people in Poland did indeed leave baby strollers by the border for people traveling with babies and toddlers to use. But they were left for Ukrainians escaping, not necessarily for parents of babies born through surrogacy. My son also stayed in touch with the surrogate (in fact we all sent her additional money after the war broke out), and she could answer any questions I had about what was happening after the war had started.
I have written eleven books (nine of them published, two of them being edited now) and although they are not series, per se, I like to use many of the same characters with different ones being protagonists. The couple in “Out of Ukraine” was introduced in “The Columbarium” as parents interring their four-year-old daughter in one of the niches at the San Francisco institution. This is not at all the case with my son and daughter-in-law, but it gave me a connection to another of my books.
The strange thing is that this is the first book that is based totally on an experience I had, although many of the characters and stories in my other books are based on my experiences and me. I actually found it harder to write something resembling a memoir. But my biggest inspiration for writing “Out of Ukraine” is my granddaughter.
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OUT OF UKRAINE
Eric and Abby travel from California to Ukraine to pick up Jillian, born via surrogacy, when Russia attacks and they are forced to flee. It is the middle of the COVID pandemic in the frigid temperatures of winter as they escape the horrors of war with an infant and little else.
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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing
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