The author, Lt. Col. Mike Ramsdell, grew up in the small town of Bear River, Utah. He served an LDS
mission in Germany, enlisted in the U.S. Army and was then trained as a Russian linguist and counterintelligence specialist. These qualifications led to his becoming involved in clandestine missions for the U.S. government in Russia in the last days of the Soviet Union. In 1991 he was in Siberia on a covert mission to arrest and export for trial a Russian
mafia figure who had been involved in the deleterious bugging of the aborted U.S. Embassy Building in Moscow. But Ramsdell''s
cover was blown and, escaping an assassination attempt with wounds, he had to fend for himself in getting across Siberia to Moscow by
train in the fierce Russian winter. Nearly freezing and starving in a "safe house" in the small town of Potevka he reflects on what is important to him: his son, his fiance back in Utah, and his belief in God. A Train to Potevka is indeed, as the blurb from the Leader on the back cover says, "a story of
faith and
hope wrapped up in a roller coaster of suspense and fight for survival." It''s a first work by the author, published by Zhivago Press of Layton, Utah, but it''s an exciting and a moving read. As a Russian linguist myself I was only discomfitted by the curiously irregular transliteration of the Russian words. ISBN 978-1-59872-030-3.
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