With a Heart Full of Love: Clara Taylor's Letters from Russia 1917-1919 Volume 2 - Paperback

by Katrina Maloney (Author), Patricia M. Maloney (Author)

From the fall of 1918 to summer 1919, six YWCA women are attached to the North Russia Expeditionary Forces, an international military mission posted in the city of Arkhangelsk, North Russia. With this change, Clara Taylor's second year working for the YWCA in Russia turns out to be vastly different from her previous year in Moscow.

No longer teaching home economics or surveying factory conditions, Clara now finds herself dancing with soldiers at parties, then learning of their deaths in action the next day; reading to ill soldiers in the hospital; and serving hot coffee to ragtag men on the front lines of the Vologda railroad front in the bitter Russian winter. Throughout, she remains strong, courageous, and dedicated to her ideals of service. Even her own hospitalization for appendicitis does not stop her from supporting others in an untenable situation. Able to let loose about her own political views in these letters, Clara writes scathing commentary about the ineptitude of the military command. She also writes of the frozen landscape, the astounding beauty of the northern lights, homesickness, the strength of the Russian people, and, finally, the overwhelming joy of returning home to her family.

Author Biography

Katrina Maloney, Ed.D. lives and writes in southern New Hampshire. She is a former professor of natural sciences and education. When not at her day job as a legal assistant, she kayaks, reads, writes, plays music, and gardens on her property, which faces Mount Monadnock in Marlborough, NH.

Patricia M. Maloney grew up in Nebraska and came east to attend college. She and her husband, John, raised their three children in Connecticut. Now retired from her career as a director of Christian education, she spends her time traveling, reading and boating at her lake cottage, playing the organ and piano, and singing in local chorales.