A Secret Life Abroad After Family’s Escape From Soviet Invasion

Vivie's Secret by Terry Lee Caruthers

"Terry Lee Caruthers has woven together themes of identity, family, and survival in a story that is both heart-wrenching and deeply personal."

After a grueling escape from Hungary following the 1956 Soviet invasion, her father arranges for friends to take her across the Atlantic to America. Before she boards the ocean liner, he pulls her aside, and from his ragged coat takes out a flat, rectangular, butcher-paper-wrapped package tied with twine.

“Keep this with you always. Never let anyone see it, Vivie. It is very important that you remember this.”

That’s the secret in Terry Lee Caruthers’ harrowing and heartbreaking YA novel, Vivie’s Secret, a marvelous work of historical fiction based loosely on the “secret life” of the author’s friend Vivie Babb. The book initially was conceived as a picture storybook, but the author changed course, writing most of it, fittingly, in one of Vivie’s chairs at her computer workstation.

Harrowing Escape for One Family

In 1956, nearly 250,000 Hungarians fled the country to save their families from the onslaught of Soviet forces tightening their grip on the territory. Twelve-year-old Vivie, along with her parents and younger sister, represented one of those families on a torturous race to the border.

Caruthers captures the action and agony of their terrifying escape, off main roads, hitching rides, navigating forests, facing fear, illness and starvation, trekking through the back country and eventually reaching Austria, Switzerland and France.

The author describes the emotional toll brilliantly: “Children wore a frightened, guarded countenance – a haunted look in their eyes at the uncertainty of what lay ahead. Adults grimaced, their faces etched with frowns and worry-creased foreheads…some with solemn expressions and tear-stained cheeks, their eyes wide with fear.”

Simply calling Vivie’s Secret an exciting adventure story would not be doing it justice.

Realistic Historical Account

Along with a historical perspective, the book provides a realistic and courageous look at how young children, in the face of life-threatening adversity, had to shed their childhood innocence, grow up fast, and develop a resilience and maturity to put the situation in perspective and deal with it, away from their dolls and dreams.

One of the most touching elements is Vivie’s bond with her cat, Norsk, whom she is heartbroken to abandon in the chaos of their flight. This loss becomes a recurring thread throughout the book, as Vivie constantly encounters stray and feral cats along the journey, identifying with their loneliness, hunger, and fear. These encounters serve as a reflection of Vivie’s own sense of displacement and helplessness, as both she and the cats are left to fend for themselves in a world that has suddenly become hostile.

Meanwhile, the weight of Vivie’s secret, and that butcher-paper-wrapped package that Vivie keeps examining but that readers keep guessing about, adds a sense of intrigue. Her struggle to maintain the secret is just more of the physical and emotional baggage she is carrying.

In Vivie’s Secret, author Terry Lee Caruthers has woven together themes of identity, family, and survival in a story that is both heart-wrenching and deeply personal.

And what of that secret? Hang in there – it’s worth it.