Two different families escape from the political tyranny of their respective homelands, the Josephsons from Sweden and Matias and Kurt Bauman, brothers from Germany and Austria Hungary, with the aid of a Viennese opera diva, Sophie Augusta Rose, and Jean Guenoc, a former Jesuit priest, family friend and protector and partisan of the French underground.
Their journey brings them to America in the throes of the industrial revolution during the 1890s and early 1900s. Ingrid and Olaf Josephson settle on a small wheat farm in North Central Minnesota to raise their children, Newt and Julie.
Among the Jewish entrepreneurs forced to leave Germany and Austria-Hungary, Matias and Kurt Bauman re-establish their transportation company in Chicago, Illinois.
In search of a secret list of insurgent social democrats, the bounty hunter assassin, Luther Baggot, tracks his victims to the American heartland. Following the murder of their mother and father, Newt, Julie, and their friends, Aaron and Beth Peet, hide from the killer in a Northern Minnesota logging camp. Believing the children have taken possession of the list, Luther tracks them down.
Fleeing to a central Minnesota town, the four young people come across a remote business location of Bauman Enterprises and meet Matias Bauman, who had been a friend and former political collaborator with Newt’s and Julie’s parents. He takes them all to Chicago where a different world opens up to them as they are thrust into the turmoil and violence of an urban society and economy careening into the new century.
Their journey brings them to America in the throes of the industrial revolution during the 1890s and early 1900s. Ingrid and Olaf Josephson settle on a small wheat farm in North Central Minnesota to raise their children, Newt and Julie.
Among the Jewish entrepreneurs forced to leave Germany and Austria-Hungary, Matias and Kurt Bauman re-establish their transportation company in Chicago, Illinois.
In search of a secret list of insurgent social democrats, the bounty hunter assassin, Luther Baggot, tracks his victims to the American heartland. Following the murder of their mother and father, Newt, Julie, and their friends, Aaron and Beth Peet, hide from the killer in a Northern Minnesota logging camp. Believing the children have taken possession of the list, Luther tracks them down.
Fleeing to a central Minnesota town, the four young people come across a remote business location of Bauman Enterprises and meet Matias Bauman, who had been a friend and former political collaborator with Newt’s and Julie’s parents. He takes them all to Chicago where a different world opens up to them as they are thrust into the turmoil and violence of an urban society and economy careening into the new century.
That Night is a blank except for the terrifying images popping up at random into ten-year-old Reza’s head—images of groping hands, swinging bottles, a woman beaten mercilessly. His mother and father are dead, and he does not know why. Living in an orphanage at the outskirts of Tehran, Reza has withdrawn into himself. To cope, he lives in the happy side of his imagination, daydreaming of the good days in the Third Garden where he lived before That Night.
He resolves escape from the hatred, anger, and torment.
After he is yet again thrashed for fighting, at midnight he scrapes a hole in the clay walls that surround his hell, climbs out, and finds his way to the foothills of the nearby Alborz Mountains. Penniless, hungry, and cold, he falls asleep in a pine forest. He wakes up to a kind, soothing voice belonging to a woman who looks like an older version of his mother. She is Paree Windom, an Iranian separated from her English husband, haunted by a horrifying event in her past. Filled with pity for the wretched orphan, she assumes Reza’s legal guardianship and moves him into her apartment.
Time strengthens their relationship, but it does not attain that of mother and son—they live in fear of yet again losing a loved one. While Reza feels increasingly at ease in his new home, he senses that Paree has her own dark secrets. Her husband, Mike, now living in western England, asks Paree and Reza to visit him. She reluctantly accepts—western England is the scene of the darkest chapter of her life. For the first few days, the visit is enjoyable, but on a rain-drenched evening, Mike walks into the house holding a bottle, a sight that triggers Reza’s horrific images of That Night. Panicking, he runs away and hides in the woods until Paree finds him. At Mike’s insistence, she and Reza meet informally with a friend, a psychiatrist who immediately diagnoses their problem. She advises that they confront the scenes of their torment and discuss them openly. By venting the torment and baring their souls, they gain intervals of freedom from the prison for wretched souls.
He resolves escape from the hatred, anger, and torment.
After he is yet again thrashed for fighting, at midnight he scrapes a hole in the clay walls that surround his hell, climbs out, and finds his way to the foothills of the nearby Alborz Mountains. Penniless, hungry, and cold, he falls asleep in a pine forest. He wakes up to a kind, soothing voice belonging to a woman who looks like an older version of his mother. She is Paree Windom, an Iranian separated from her English husband, haunted by a horrifying event in her past. Filled with pity for the wretched orphan, she assumes Reza’s legal guardianship and moves him into her apartment.
Time strengthens their relationship, but it does not attain that of mother and son—they live in fear of yet again losing a loved one. While Reza feels increasingly at ease in his new home, he senses that Paree has her own dark secrets. Her husband, Mike, now living in western England, asks Paree and Reza to visit him. She reluctantly accepts—western England is the scene of the darkest chapter of her life. For the first few days, the visit is enjoyable, but on a rain-drenched evening, Mike walks into the house holding a bottle, a sight that triggers Reza’s horrific images of That Night. Panicking, he runs away and hides in the woods until Paree finds him. At Mike’s insistence, she and Reza meet informally with a friend, a psychiatrist who immediately diagnoses their problem. She advises that they confront the scenes of their torment and discuss them openly. By venting the torment and baring their souls, they gain intervals of freedom from the prison for wretched souls.
