Orbits, Volume II

About the Book

Volume II of ORBITS: "The Reluctant Revolutionary" continues the saga of the young Estonian, Jarmo Matson, as he enrolls at the University of St. Petersburg in 1903. He joins a politically minded group, "The Circle of Friends", where Russian students mingle with Westerners (Canadian, English, American, German and French) to learn about freedom and democracy. Coming from a country conquered by Russia and administered for her by the Baltic German Knighthood, Jarmo has a built-in prejudice against Germans and Russians. Yakov Kupinski, a fellow student and a revolutionary leader, tries to recruit him to Russia's revolution, but Jarmo resists. His goal is to regain power from the local Germans, along with an even bolder goal of breaking free of Russia.

Jarmo becomes friends with Dmitri Rogov, son of a wealthy industrialist. He falls for and becomes obsessed with Dmitri's sister Kira, a ravishing beauty who only toys with him. The Rogovs introduce Jarmo to the glittering life of St. Petersburg, while Yakov Kupinski shows Jarmo the seamier side of Russia. Unwittingly, Jarmo becomes involved with Kupinski's revolutionary schemes and narrowly escapes being part of a plot to assassinate the Military Governor of Moscow, an uncle of Nicholas II.

At a ball, Jarmo meets a poet, Kirill Bergamov, and a young actress, Lyudmila Pudnitseva. Jarmo and Lyudmila "hit it off" and their friendship becomes a most pleasurable affair. She reveals that she's a revolutionary with Kupinski and warns Jarmo that the poet Bergmanov is an Okhrana Secret Police agent who suspects Jarmo of revolutionary activities. The poet is also a rejected suitor of Kira, making him a doubly dangerous enemy.

A surprise attack by Japan finds Russia ill-prepared for war and forced to sue for peace. The oppressed nation explodes into the Revolution of 1905 and anarchy engulfs Russia. During that maelstrom of madness Jarmo is faced with personal disasters, and must chart his course carefully to avoid both the extreme right and Marxist dreams of world rule. He is caught up in the horror of events, and eventually becomes "The Reluctant Revolutionary". When armed Cossacks attack the student body at a demonstration, Jarmo is severely wounded while saving Dmitri's life. He recovers at the Rogov's home, where Kira again brings her fatal charms into play. Bergmanov plots Jarmo's sentencing to Siberia; Lyudmila Pudnitseva and Dmitri's younger sister Irina plot a prison break for Jarmo...

About the Author

Sven Linholm, seemingly cool and imperturbable, belies the reality of a colourful life in which he has had experiences ranging from crowding Death's Door to sharing the joys of the Elysian Fields. Spends early childhood in Moddder Deep, South Africa, a gold mining region, where father is a mining engineer, and where nannies are kind and black. Returns to native Estonia, and attends the Lycée Française and later the English College, where first sparks of daydreaming with a pen are evident.

WW II kicks everything upside down and Stalin invades the country, bringing along a mad ideology and the horrors of bloodshed and deportations. He watches the Reds arrest his stepfather who takes his own life to thwart the possibility of betraying political friends under torture. He and the rest of the family escape the mass-deportations of the population to Russia.

Then Nazi armies invade the country. German cannon pound the city while hundreds queue for bread. A bedroom window is splattered with blood from a dead soldier on the roof, his head lying among the flowers in the garden below. Some years later Red planes return to bomb and burn a big chunk of the capital. Escapes with rest of the family just days before the Red Army returns.

A long stay at a Displaced Persons camp in the American Zone of Germany, where he works at the PX for the American Army and plays in an amateur jazz band for American Red Cross dances.

Passage to Britain at last! Among only four fields of work open to immigrants are agriculture and hospitals. Works as a gardener and handyman at a castle in the Cotswolds. Later, in a London hospital wheels patients to the operating room, or prepares corpses for visiting families, all the while studying aeronautical engineering. Accepts a position in Canada with DeHavilland and arrives just as the Korean War breaks out. Sorry, mister—no work for non-British subjects in war industry! Turns down job offer to sweep the yard.

Becomes successful selling real estate while studying economics and architecture, leading to a career in designing, building and selling houses.

Such experiences with violence and butchery, of invasions and wars have left their mark and created memories which nudge reality along mysterious paths. But they have also enhanced his delight in the beauty and pleasures life has to offer which led him to succumb to a growing desire to write a saga in which these facts and the magic of fiction mingle—a saga that's been developing in his mind for many years.

And so Orbits