“Like the master Rudy Wiebe before him, Martens deftly weaves fiction and nonfiction, the past and present, to reveal five centuries of Mennonite history. Even those familiar with the story will be certain to find in these pages a wellspring of new insights, details, and ponderable moments from both Martens’s imagination as well as his careful archival research.”
Andrew Unger, Award-winning Author of Once Removed, and Creator of The Unger Review (home of The Daily Bonnet)
“Lineage is the fruit of many years of careful research and thoughtful writing. I savoured every page. Dion Martens weaves together Mennonite history, family lore, and world events into a story that is both deeply moving and profoundly meaningful.”
Leonard Doell, Historian and Author
Lineage traces the Mennonite story through the real lives of two families across 500 years — journeying from Amsterdam’s canals to the lowlands of Poland and Prussia, across the steppes of Imperial Russia, and at last to the wide-open prairie skies of Canada.
Along the way, they risk their lives for faith, negotiate for freedom, carve homesteads from unforgiving ground, and wrest prosperity from the narrow spaces left to them. They carry grief and hope across borders and seas, and struggle with what to preserve and what to change.
This is a novel of persecution and belonging, resilience and renewal. It weaves history and story, fact and fiction, into the sweeping tapestry of the Mennonite people: wondering, wandering, enduring.
