Push Not The River

Based on the authentic eighteenth-century diary of seventeen-year-old Countess Anna Maria Berezowska this story is as much an account of her love for her family, country . . . and ond one man as it is a record of the proud and resilient Polish people at a tumultuous time in their history.

Losing her family, Anna sets out on a girl-to-woman odyssey that thrusts her into a world of love and hate, loyalty and deceit, patriotism and treason, life and death.

The saga is told through the points of view of four people: Anna, faithful and courageous, faces mythical objects as she follows a journey of the heart and soul; Zofia, her enigmatic and sensual cousin, forges an iconoclastic way of life; Aunt Stella, Anna's stalwart guardian, personifies Poland's strength and spirit; and Jan, brave compatriot of Tadeusz Kosciuszko, becomes the romantic interest of both Anna and Zofia.

PUSH NOT THE RIVER unfolds against a rich historical tapestry that chronicles the rise and fall of the Third of May Constitution. Poland becomes the target of its neighboring monarchs who fear the Constitution is sowing seeds of discontent, the kind of discontent that has triggered the French Revolution. Again and again, Poland is invaded and dismembered . . . transformed into a maelstrom from which Anna emerges an archetypal woman and heroine.