By Phoebe Farag Mikhail

During my annual reflection and planning session in early January, I realized that if 2017 was the year I discovered podcasts, 2018 was the year I discovered audiobooks. I know I am late to the game on audio books, but now that I’ve finally discovered them, I’m hooked. So I jumped at the opportunity to review the audiobook I Live Again: A Memoir of Ileana, Princess of Romania and Archduchess of Austria from Ancient Faith Publishing, and I am so glad I did. I had no idea who Ileana was until I started listening. Once I did, I was fascinated.

I Live Again is the memoir of a remarkable woman in the unique positions of Princess of Romania, later Archduchess of Austria, and finally Mother Alexandra at the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration in Pennsylvania. Her life spanned World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, and her memoir details her days as a princess and archduchess turned war-time nurse during some of the darkest days of 20^th century history. She describes a life of royalty in Romania as one not of luxury, pomp and circumstance but of faith in God and love and duty towards her people. During the war she eventually converts her castle in Romania into a hospital, and her home becomes the site of an underground resistance, before she and her family were painfully exiled by the Communist Russian occupiers of Romania.

This is a book for World War II history buffs, lovers of historical fiction, and anyone who enjoys a good memoir about a woman with a remarkable life and an even more remarkable personality. While describing her selflessness and persistence, she is also honest about her doubts, fears, and struggles as a wife, mother, and de facto leader to a people struggling for survival and independence. I could tell I would enjoy her perspective the moment I heard these words:

But inside, the “me” that was me independently of the mother, the wife, the friend— the essential “me” upon which all the rest is built— suffered a mortal shock when my life was severed from my people. So I had to start again, not only outwardly but especially inwardly.”

Because we know that Princess Illeana’s life ends with her as the Abbess of an Orthodox women’s monastery, we know that her Orthodox Christian faith plays a strong part in this inward journey. We get hints of this journey when she describes how God worked even when her faith was weak, how she had the presence of mind to pray Psalm 90 aloud as she crouched in a bomb shelter with other hospital staff as fighter jets attacked overhead, and how she served as Godmother to many babies baptized during wartime – one baby born on a train of refugees, baptized while the train rested at a station, and then continued along with the family escaping war.

There is a clear turning point in her faith when she was not allowed by the authorities to attend her mother’s seven year memorial service, an important service in the Romanian Orthodox Church. She turned to her small chapel to pray about a pain she thought she could not endure, and after a time she realized, “It was not easy to find my balance again; to live again; and when I did I was bitterly lonely. It was only when I had turned entirely to God and forgotten myself and my pain that I found I was neither lost nor alone.”

My only wish for this memoir was that it continued to tell of her journey from Romania to Switzerland, from Switzerland to Buenos Aires, from Buenos Aires to Boston, and then eventually from Boston to Pennsylvania where she founded the monastery, until she died in 1991. It begins with her telling her readers about her past as if they are seated with her in her kitchen in Boston, and it ends with her last moments in Romania when the Communists force her and her family out. To learn more about the second half of her life as a monastic, we must turn to other writings about her, thankfully many collected here.

Ancient Faith Publishing provided me with the audio book to review, and I enjoyed it so much I bought the ebook myself, so that I could go back and read some sections and also see some of the photographs and sketches provided. The audio book is dynamically narrated by Kristina Wenger, whose narration was especially helpful in the pronunciation of many Romanian, Russian, German and Austrian names. Because Princess Ileana often addresses her readers (she specifically wrote this book for an American audience so they could understand what really happened in Romania during World War II), listening to the audio book made me feel like she was sharing her story directly to me.

Whether you read I Live Again in your hands, in an ebook or as an audio book, it is worth your time. It is engrossing and inspiring, and I am so glad I was introduced to this amazing woman through her memoir. To buy audio book on Audible, click here. You can also buy the ebook and add the audio for a reduced price by clicking here and then clicking on “add Audible narration” before you check out. You can buy the book itself from Ancient Faith Publishing here, from Amazon here, or request it from your local library.

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