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Ilze's Daughter invites you into the intimate world of an immigrant girl growing up in rural Pennsylvania. A memoir in verse, this collection of poems captures experiences of displacement, loss, struggle, first love, family, resilience. Bolster traces her family's uprooting from WWII occupied Latvia, abandoning her mother's farm, ""Don't ask me./I really can't say/ if fear surged up suffocating/ mother so breath came only/in gasps/ as she climbed /onto an overloaded wagon . . ."" The images and vignettes are personal and crack open a door into her world of duality: honoring her Latvian heritage and grieving her mother's losses, yet discovering a new world of delights, (""We called them the Rockies/huge boulders as if some god/had scattered them among the trees/just for us to climb and skin our knees.""), the comradeship of six siblings, and falling in love with an American boy. Bolster includes an addendum, putting into perspective family events within the context of world events.

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Born in Greven, Germany in a displaced persons camp, Riki Bolster emigrated to the United States in 1949. She grew up in rural Pennsylvania as part of a close-knit Latvian immigrant community. Much of her writing speaks to these experiences.A former journalism teacher, Riki Bolster enjoyed a 19-year tenure at Grady High School (renamed Midtown High School), an inner-city school in Atlanta, Georgia, where she developed courses in Mass Media, Introduction to Journalism, Newspaper Production and Television Production. Her students and the student newspaper, The Southerner, consistently won state and national awards. She was named Atlanta Public Schools High School Teacher of the Year in 1998-99.Upon retirement she established and administered an after school Writing Center for students and started a book club for parents which has continued for 15 years. Bolster's prior writing was primarily work related. She honed her editing and writing skills on curriculums, grant applications, and feature stories for local publications. She was first editor for Saving the Georgia Coast, published by UGA Press in 2020. Ilze's Daughter is her first book of poetry. She credits the encouragement and critique of her writing group, Inkfingers, and membership in the Atlanta Writing Club.Now a transplanted Yankee, Livija Bolster holds a BA in English from Eastern University and an M.Ed in Special Education from the University of Georgia. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and has three grown children.

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