"Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" is a novel about the love of two descendants of hostile families, similar to the Ukrainian Romeo and Juliet - Ivan and Marichka, which unfolds among the Carpathian mountains. The Carpathians themselves appear in this story as a separate character, saturated with legends and spirits.

Mykhailo Kotsiubinsky was extremely serious about reproducing the world of Hutsul beliefs and traditions. He studied the life and language of Hutsul villages, compiled dictionaries, studied local plants, attended weddings and other traditional ceremonies. All this in order to convey the atmosphere of that corner of the world as faithfully as possible.

Chugaister, schaeznik, hawk and molfara, calling for bad weather. And along with this love, a difficult choice between heavenly and earthly love. Fictional and real, pagan and Christian, everything is intertwined in one story, where spirits influence man, and man affects spirits, and reality itself becomes part of the myth.