Book excerpt: Finalist for the 2019 Whistler Independent Book Awards, Semi-finalist for 2019 Kindle Book Awards, Literary Fiction, and Honorable Mention 2020 Writers' Digest Self-Published Book Awards. In this family saga, love and loss are bound together by a country always at war During WWI, Lukia Mazurets, a Ukrainian farmwife, delivers her eighth child while her husband is serving in the Tsar’s army. Soon after, she and her children are forced to flee the invading Germans. Over the next fourteen years, Lukia must rely on her wits and faith to survive life in a refugee camp, the ravages of a typhus epidemic, the Bolshevik revolution, unimaginable losses, and one daughter’s forbidden love. Sunflowers Under Fire is a heartbreakingly intimate novel that illuminates the strength of the human spirit. Based on the true stories of her grandmother’s ordeals, author Diana Stevan captures the voices of those who had little say in a country that is still being fought over.