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By Steve Pike

It’s always a challenge and risk for an author to write about a well-known historical figure. When that figure is Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, youngest daughter of Russian Czar Nicholas II, the bar is raised even higher.
In his self-published book, Challenging Destiny: The Untold Story of Anastasia, Dr. Mark Jay Gang goes over the bar. A retired psychologist who lives in Boynton Beach, Gang has used his clinical experiences and family history to weave a story that will have readers guessing until the end.
Because the Grand Duchess, along with her entire family, was killed (or believed killed) by the Bolsheviks in 1918, Gang’s story is a fictionalized telling of her survival from the carnage at Yekaterinburg. It spans three continents and a century of love, despair, death and destruction.
Challenging Destiny is Gang’s first book. It was accepted in the Palm Beach County Library System in the local author collection. It also is available at Amazon.
“I’ve always been a history buff,” Gang said. “And over the past 30 years I’ve come in contact with a variety of people who have all kinds of stories. So I’ve become a wealth of information on stories about people.”
Gang developed a love of stories and history at a young age when he listened to his grandmother tell stories of the Mother Homeland.
“My grandmother talked to me about Russia and coming over here on a ship,” Gang said. “As Americans, we’re a melting pot of immigrants. My mother was from Great Britain and my grandmother was from Russia. So there is that influence.
“I’d always wanted to write about Anastasia. She was no ordinary woman.”