Journey Into the Mind's Eye

At an early age, Miss Blanch fell in love with ikons, samovars, troikas, wolves, cossacks, snow, gypsies, boyars, and jeweled Easter eggs, all of them preferably trundling to Vladivostok aboard the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The whole show, plus the Tartar gentleman whose tales established the infatuation, vanished before she could get at it, leaving Miss Blanch, at twenty, a nostalgic exile from a country that had never existed. The situation is odd but by no means unique, and in Miss Blanch’s case became the basis for study, for travel, and ultimately for the writing of books. In this selective memoir, she describes the process with subtlety and also with a candidly romantic enthusiasm.