Asya's Laws: Lessons in Love Lost and Found

This was an incredible oportunity for me to re-live the life in Latvia through Asya's wonderful book. It brought me back to the incredible country, its people and the magnificent history that will stay with me forever.
Asay's Laws is a wonderful combination of a trying life story and a history of an amazing country. I started reading this book on a 5 hour plane ride, and finished it by the end of the flight. I cried, I laughed, and most of all it made me appreciate my life! The writing is absolutely amazing. Extremely easy to read, words just flow by. This is one book you definitely want to buy!!! It will make you want to visit Latvia and its wonderful sights, and give you a new-found appreciation for what you already have...

Vacation, my favorite time to lounge and read a good book. The 1st day I thought I would read Asya's Law while I sat and had my coffee in the morning. I found myself setting down the book and then picking up the book 10 minutes later to read for "just a few more minutes". Before I knew it, I had finished the book that afternoon.

I learned about life in a Soviet country, Latvia, and that love is no different wherever you live. Through Asya's eyes I was able to feel what it is like to have so little, come to the US and walk into one of our grocery stores where there is not 1 or 2 of an item but there might be 10 different types of the same thing. The next day I walked into my grocery store, I walked around trying to think of how overpowering and mind boggling it was for Asya and yet how we take it all for granted.

I have been back from vacation for 2 weeks and still find myself thinking about Asya and her life, her sense of humor and "laws". I would recommend this book to everyone, it is an easy read, enjoyable and made me think of how lucky I was to have been born in the U.S.

Totally enjoyable! The short chapters flow but allowed me to read during snippets of my busy week. All too quickly I finished the book during a weekend getaway. I loved getting to know Asya through her personal journey of love and family and friendships.

Asya Raines' little masterpiece invites us to her spiritual home. Like the concierge of an intimate hotel, she welcomes us. We are for an evening her pampered guests reading in a quiet sitting room and sipping a glass of her vintage Champagne. Asya's words so well-sculpted by the deft hand of Charles Fleetham encourage us to put aside our loveless travels with their many contradictions and conflicts. If we pause to reflect upon Asya's hopeful message in our hearts, we just might allow ourselves to fall in love for the first time or once again and never be the same! -- Christopher J. Webb, July 14, 2006

"Asya's Laws" is a fascinating, multi-layered autobiography. It is the story of a Jew in an anti-Semitic society; the story of a Baltic communist experiencing the upheaval of perestroika and the downfall of the Soviet Union; the story of an immigrant struggling to integrate into a new and alien environment; but most of all, it is the story of a woman.

Twice-divorced Asya Raines, a Latvian Jew who immigrated to the U.S. in 1997 while in her mid-forties, relates her life-history as viewed through the prism of her relationships with her friends, her family and her lovers. Her mostly tongue-in-cheek "laws" are the lessons that she learns along the way. She shares these lessons with the reader in a way that is both entertaining and instructive, but totally lacking in pomposity, arrogance or false piety. (Example: "a real man does not leave a lady waiting at the theater!") Asya has an inspirational ability to learn from the past instead of becoming embittered by it, to understand and even forgive the bad things that other people do, to recognize and learn from her own mistakes, and to look forward to the future and the adventures that lie ahead.

Asya's distinctive voice, relayed admirably by Charles Fleetham, has a slight but charming foreign accent. It demonstrates how she has held onto her roots while simultaneously adapting to her new surroundings. She occasionally addresses the reader directly, enhancing the intimacy of the narrative. At the end I found myself hoping that at last she has found "true love."

I would thoroughly recommend this book both to the romantic at heart, as well as to anyone interested in learning what life was really like behind the Iron Curtain.