The Moratorium of Anya

The Moratorium of Anya explores the struggle for redemption faced by an adoptivefamily following forced separation from their 11-year-old daughter in Ukraine. When a young American couple embarks on an intercountry adoption, fate unfolds in the discovery of Anastasia and Katerina, and engulfs the new family in a gripping journey. Under the collapsed Soviet Union, Anastasia’s Russian birth forces new legal precedence to establish her citizenship. Meanwhile, the orphanage reveals buried secrets into Anya and Katia’s past. The girls grapple with the illegal sale of their baby siblings to Israel; and, under quarantine, their own lives become endangered, as a deadly outbreak of measles takes lives and threatens the orphanage. Finally, in an effort to spare the girls, an adoption decree is issued. Unable to secure the needed Russian birth certificate for Anya, the family is forced to return to America without her. In the care of the Schadowsky’s Ukrainian advocate, Natasha, Anya battles with emotions of abandonment after the loss of her birth family, and now her only remaining sister, Katia, has gone to the United States with their new mother and father. A determined mother returns to Ukraine after six months of political tyranny between the three governments. In a harrowing and true saga of sacrifice and redemption, Shelley Schadowsky resists arrest, and ultimately secures Anya’s citizenship as guns are leveled.