Cynthia LeBrun grew up in Kelowna, British Columbia and studied to be a teacher at Simon Fraser University. She taught in a northern one-room schoolhouse west of Fort St. John, as well as the isolated logging camp of Phillips Arm, and finally in Campbell River. Black Sunflowers is inspired by the vivid memories of her mother-in-law, who grew up in Soviet Occupied Ukraine. Cynthia now lives and writes in the beautiful Comox Valley on Vancouver Island, where she enjoys time in her garden and being with her grandsons. Black Sunflowers is her first novel.

"Told in Veronika's and her father Janek's alternating perspectives, this historical account is based on the experiences of the author's mother-in-law and is grounded in historical research. Janek's perspective gives voice to the violent brutality of Soviet rule and the heartbreak of trying to provide for one's family under an authoritarian regime, while Veronika's chapters offer moments of impish levity and youthful hope. A significant moment in Ukrainian history brought to light in an accessible, moving, and personal way."
— Kirkus Review

"This important, revealing story, portrays the suffering, but also the strength and resilience, of the Ukrainian people."
— Calgary Herald

"Cynthia LeBrun's Black Sunflowers is called a novel, but it has its feet firmly planted in the pitch-black reality of the Holodomor, the Soviet-engineered famine that is estimated to have killed up to five million Ukrainians… this book feels timely in a way all good historical fiction should. And as the bloody twentieth century recedes away from us, it's stories like this one that can put a human face on what would otherwise be a pile of grim statistics."
— The British Columbia Review