Based on the memoirs of Melānija Vanaga, Chronicles of Melanie is a terrifying account of the mass deportation of residents of Soviet-occupied Latvia that occurred in June of 1941 as Stalin tightened his grip on power. Melanie, one of over 17,000 people deported to Siberia under suspicion of “collaborating with the enemy”, is forcibly separated from her husband Aleksandrs shortly after Soviet troops barge into her home at gunpoint and force her, Aleksandrs and their son Andrejs into a lorry to be transported to awaiting cattle cars. The journey to Siberia lasts 3 weeks aboard the cattle cars, during which a diet of scraps of bread, dirty water and no bathrooms are just the beginning of a long and brutal exile.

Most of the deportees are those who are part of families in which one or more members hold prominent positions in government, economy and culture. Aleksander is the editor of a Latvian newspaper and a natural target of Soviet purges.

Out of her detailed notes that later became the literary work of her 16 years spent in Siberia, Melānija Vanaga prepared a book of documentary prose Veļupes krastā, which was published in 1991, soon after Latvia regained independence. Later, it served as the concluding volume in Vanaga’s seven-book series The Gathering of Souls about the personal history of her family and Latvia.