Sargent
Iordana Borila was in love. The year was 1965 in communist Romania. She had met dashing Valentin, one of her classmates and goalie on the school soccer team. The young lovers snuck around, hung out in the park. They kept in touch with calls and letters while he studied in London, and they eventually married.
There was only one problem, Valentin was the oldest son of the Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu – and their union forever linked Iordana Ceausescu to the excesses of the Ceausescu regime and the turmoil the country would undergo at the end of the 20th century. She would eventually flee Romania following the execution of Nicolai Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, during a bloody revolution in 1989. Valentin survived but would stay behind in Romania.
Kennebunk resident Colin Sargent, a writer and the founding editor and publisher of Portland Magazine, first met Iordana Ceausescu in the 1990s when she was living with her son in Old Orchard Beach, hiding out from the world.
Her life became the subject of his third book, a “nonfiction novel” called “Red Hands.” Even in death (she passed away in 2017, according to Sargent), she remains a source of inspiration and admiration for the author.
The two were introduced by a former Romanian race car driver that Sargent had met while writing a review. It quickly became clear to Sargent that he had stumbled on a story that needed to be told.
“She looked down, radiating a strange combination of shyness and privilege,” Sargent recounts of their first encounter in the prologue of the book. “It couldn’t be. Was this the daughter-in-law of the executed dictators of Romania? I took her coat and hung it in the hall closet. What on earth was she doing here? How had she found herself in Maine? A black swallowtail in the snow.”
Sargent conducted over 800 hours of interviews with Ceausescu that form the basis of “Red Hands,” which he agreed not to publish until she passed away. “Red Hands” was first released in the United Kingdom in 2020 and last year in the United States.
In “Red Hands,” Sargent presents the greed of the Ceausescu family coupled with Nicolae Ceausescu’s economic mismanagement of the country, which led to shortages of fuel, food and other necessities.
During an early visit to the “main palace,” Iordana Ceausescu recounts: “In a storage room built like a bunker, we saw stacks of leopard skins and tusks from Idi Amin; gold and silver presentation platters, pitchers, tea sets, loving cups; priceless marble statuary; Turkish and Persian carpets; Ottoman chalices encrusted with jewels; Chinese lacquered furniture and antique porcelain; crystal; Delft pottery; and paintings from all over the world.”
The extent of that wealth was revealed to the country during the revolution.
“She started unseeing herself as innocent and seeing that she was culpable for some of the things that happened,” said Sargent.
The book is told from Ceausescu’s first person perspective. When asked why he chose that format, Sargent said simply “because that’s how I became aware of (her story).”
While the book does recount historical episodes – like the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 – Sargent acknowledges that relying so heavily on one person’s narrative necessarily blends truth and fiction.
“When you have recollected conversations, and there were many of them (in the book) that were over 50 years old, it’s not responsible to say it’s fact,” he said.
During their many interviews, the two became close, said Sargent. Sargent described her as “elegant,” “intelligent,” and also a “significant romantic.”
It’s no wonder they got along. Sargent himself has a romantic streak – keen to see the beauty and poetry in everyday life.
Just take his observations about the ocean that came up during our interview: “I think a lot of people in Maine … a whole big emotional part of them is the ocean right beside their world,” he said. He said he sees the shore as latent with meaning: a liminal space that represents change and possibility.
“In early June, a bunch of high school seniors will start flocking to Gooch’s beach … because they’re teetering on the rest of their (lives) and it’s an enormous time for them,” he said. “That’s why there’s so much literature about people that age. They’re standing at the water’s edge, which is an objective correlative for the rest of their lives.”
Sargent grew up in Portland but spent his summers in Kennebunk. Today he lives in the same cottage he visited during those summers, a cottage nicknamed the Black Pearl. He got his start in writing while contributing to his high school’s newspaper. Later, he attended the Naval Academy in Maryland, where he studied English and wrote poetry. Then, while working at what was then called the Naval Safety Center in Virginia, he was an editor for Approach magazine, the “Navy and Marine Corps Aviation Safety Magazine,” which first launched in 1955.
He went on to get a Stonecoast MFA in creative writing from the University of Southern Maine and a PhD in creative writing from the University of Lancaster in the United Kingdom – eventually authoring three books of poetry and two novels before “Red Hands” – but he chose to highlight his time at Approach when asked about where he got his start as a writer.
“You had to assume that aviators in ready rooms and on carriers (had) a very low attention span except for what they’re doing,” he explained, meaning that he learned quickly that there was no room for boring stories in the magazine. “All of our stories began at 10,000 feet in icy altitudes with an impending crash,” he remembered.
From the experience, Sargent drew the conclusion that when it comes to storytelling, “people want a ride. They want to be excited.”
It’s fair to say he applied that approach to “Red Hands,” with success.
Readers have also awarded it largely positive reviews on the book reviewing site, Goodreads. It was recently chosen by Amazon Kindle as a “Book of the Month” in May, according to Sargent.
“My family and friends are so proud that I have been able to keep Iordana’s voice and point of view alive, which is so important in these times of rising nationalism,” Sargent wrote in a follow up email.
Sargent does not have any book talks or events scheduled, but he hopes to plan some for the summer.
He also said he has a new book coming out this year, “Flying Dark,” which he describes as a “horror romance” that draws on his experience in the Navy and his love for the coast of Maine.
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