Miroslav Penkov

Stork Mountain follows a young Bulgarian-American man who returns to his ancestral village in Bulgaria after the disappearance of his grandfather, a former communist official. Hoping to uncover the truth about his family’s past, he becomes immersed in the history and traditions of a rural community near the Turkish border, where generations have lived through political upheaval, shifting national identities, and religious tensions. As he investigates his grandfather’s life, the narrator encounters stories of forbidden love, ancient rituals, and the complicated legacy of Bulgaria’s communist era. The village’s inhabitants preserve memories and customs that seem increasingly distant from the modern world, while the narrator struggles to reconcile his American upbringing with the homeland he has inherited through family history. Miroslav Penkov blends folklore, historical fiction, and contemporary storytelling to explore belonging, migration, and the ways personal identity is shaped by collective memory. The novel reveals how the past continues to influence the present, even when its stories have been forgotten, distorted, or deliberately concealed.