13. A Train to Potevka by Mike Ramsdell

This book is the mostly true story of an LDS man, Mike Ramsdell, who served as an American intelligence officer in the Soviet Union right before its fall. His undercover mission fails and he is abandoned in a remote Russian town and has to deal with the Russian mafia and the KGB. Eventually, he is able to escape on a peasant train that goes across Siberia, but his troubles are only beginning. His only food gets stolen, he has a hole in his head and several broken ribs and the safe house they send him to doesn’t have any food or anything else. So he gets caught in a blizzard in this small town and has to beg for food. Miraculously he receives a package with food and is able to survive and make it back to the US Embassy in Moscow. It really is a harrowing story and he interweaves the main story with memories from his entire life growing up in Bear River, UT and as a young intelligence agent and with his family and loved ones. I really liked it but could only read it in small doses because it meandered so much. Very inspiring and interesting. I read it because my book club is reading it for this month. It wasn’t something I would have just picked up on my own, but I liked it.