In 1951, 18-year-old Alla Reyf joined the ranks of Sovi­et cit­i­zens whose lives were trans­formed — nev­er for the bet­ter — by a night­time knock on the door. Writ­ten decades lat­er in Cana­da, Where We Buried the Sun relates Tumanov’s time in the Sovi­et gulag sys­tem. After 15 months of soli­tary con­fine­ment in Moscow’s Lefer­to­vo prison, she was sen­tenced to 25 years in the gulag. Tumanov was one of the lucky ones — two of her fel­low arrestees, also teenagers, were exe­cut­ed. It is at once a chill­ing and mov­ing read.