UNTIL THEY SLEEP

In the early 20th century, Frona grows up as the responsible oldest daughter in a hardworking family, troubled by her many appetites and guilty about the reproving looks she thinks are given to her by the family icon of Mary and Jesus. Betrothed at 14, she moves at 18 to a new village with the stranger who will be her husband, the ugly but kindhearted Kimon, and discovers a “troubling enthusiasm over her husband’s body,” an enthusiasm that leads in quick succession to six children, who follow her around the village like ducklings. Frona befriends newcomer Ligia, who is forced into marriage with an abusive drinker and gambler. When it becomes clear that Ligia won’t be able to have the children she desires, Frona comes up with a plan that has unfortunate repercussions through the years. As the decades pass, focus shifts to Frona’s sweet herbalist daughter, Galena, and her best friend, the damaged mechanic and blackmailer Rouvin, and to a crafty plot to subdue the bored and increasingly violent soldiers who have occupied the town and led its residents toward starvation. While grounding her tale in the intimate details of village life, Staikos also ventures into the supernatural, most notably in the case of a character who wakes up from a violent death to a surprising afterlife as a ghost and finds himself “stuck in a world he had never let himself enjoy.” An exploration of guilt and the liberating effects of casting off shame, the novel regards even its most benighted characters with sympathy, and offers hope to those who would seem most entrenched in destructive patterns of thought and action.