Meadow Fog, Burnt Away by a Red Dawn

ADVENTURE

Pages: 226 Ratings:

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In 1988, Nick Valko works as a doctor in Glasgow, but also takes on the responsibility of caring for his alcoholic and disorientated father. As the elderly man recounts fragments of his Soviet past, Nick begins to confront a difficult and enigmatic revelation.

Meadow Fog, Burnt Away by a Red Dawn explores Nick Valko’s struggle to untangle the complicated history of his alcoholic father and the reasons for his father’s disillusionment with the Soviet Union. Unsure if his father’s stories are fantasy or reality, Nick grapples with his father’s questionable reliability as he tries to decipher the contradictions and hidden truths within his father’s tales. While Nick cares for his ailing father, fragments emerge of the elder Valko’s eventful life in Moscow and the Ural forests, revealing his participation in clandestine Soviet experiments that led to his realisation about a challenging truth and drove him to betray his homeland.

Told from Nick’s sceptical viewpoint, Meadow Fog, Burnt Away by a Red Dawn unfolds as an adventure, a love story, and a testament to friendship and betrayal against the backdrop of wartime survival. It develops themes of childhood exploration, discovery, and the allure of the natural world, whilst contemplating the sacrifices one makes to uphold personal integrity, in the face of conflicting truths and ideals, when we try to understand and reconcile with the past.

Colin Johnson grew up and still lives in Leeds. Colin’s background is in academic research and technical writing, but he has also read a lot of science fiction and listened to a lot of music of all types. His experience of music and popular culture, in the novel’s unnamed ‘Northern town’, provides the backdrop for many of the key events and misadventures of the protagonist and his friends. When he is not writing, Colin rides a bike, tries to grow a wildflower meadow and enjoys time with his family.