Boston College alumnus Lev Golinkin has published A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka (Doubleday, 2014), about his Jewish family fleeing the Soviet Union in the waning years of the Cold War, with only 10 suitcases, six hundred dollars, and the vague promise of help awaiting in Vienna. Years later, Golinkin would return to Austria and Eastern Europe to track down the strangers who made his escape possible and say thank you. According to the publisher, Golinkin’s debut is a thrilling tale of escape and survival, a deeply personal look at the life of a Jewish child caught in the last gasp of the Soviet Union, and a provocative investigation into the power of hatred and the search for belonging. Kirkus Reviews calls Golinkin’s memoir “a mordantly affecting chronicle of a journey to discover that ‘you can’t have a future if you don’t have a past.'”