Margaret Walker, Through Forests and Mountains (Penmore Press 2021)
6 stars. A heroic story, gorgeous, unclichéd writing, reflecting superb understanding of the history
Captain Anton Marković is recuperating in hospital, his arm shattered by the propellers of his torpedo boat, the Nebojša. Mara leaves the ambassador’s mansion in a pique; she wants to return to Belgrade. Her father the ambassador says, ‘find the boyfriend’, Miroslav. ‘He’ll be able to find her’.
Miroslav finds Mara, but she wants nothing to do with him, his possessiveness and his Croatian fascist politics. She has listened to a talk by Tito, and she’s impressed. She attends a meeting of communist women and joins a 10-day barefoot march to Drvar in Bosnia, along the way receiving harsh lessons in the plight of the proletariat. The communist women ask Mara to take a position teaching in liberated Užice, and though she had hoped for ‘more epic’ work, she is happy.
Anton takes to the mountains with Montenegrin chieftain, Nikola Mugoša, and two of Mugoša’s sons. With the Germans occupied with invading Russia, when Italy claims Montenegro, the Yugoslav uprising takes them by surprise. Belgrade is Judenfrei, and they are looking for ways to execute more untermenschen like Serbs and Slavs.
Mara takes up with a British spy, Mr Hudson codenamed ‘Marko’, but they are accosted by her Croatian stalker Miroslav, and he threatens her. He breaks in to Hudson’s flat and steals his codebooks. Mara ends up with Anton’s party and other refugees, all the while stalked by Miroslav.
The writing is beautiful, unclichéd, in places funny, filled with gorgeous phrases like ‘his night’s morphine flashing from her syringe’, ‘the priest’s…towering black presence filled the outhouse with authority’, ‘he woke up bathed in the scent of finer things that lingered through shaving and breakfast’ and ‘she farewelled the city as the dawn cast amber ripples across its traumatised buildings’.
The pronouncements of the partisans on the two extreme ends of the political spectrum, communists and fascists, are credible; this evidences the author’s understanding of both and is something that is hard to do. The scene where Mara first encounters the villagers of Drvar is astounding!
We learn the complicated history of wartime Yugoslavia, fed bit by bit into the dialogue. This is very artful. Despite the complexity of the history, the plot is not too complex to follow, and time is taken to appreciate the horrors of war.
Death to fascism; freedom to the people!
(I received an ARC from Reedsy Discovery)
Susie Helme 
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