An easy-going American and an intense Hungarian are a mature couple who get engaged just as the Iron Curtain falls in 1989. Army vet Arnie Smith considers it great news, but refugee immigrant Julia Kertesz is swept with a cascade of raw hurts. As the two work through their differing views about that period in history, current family crises push them into deeper conflict until a revived trauma signals the end. The novel is based on a memoir written by the author's mother after the family's 1956 escape from Communist Hungary. The memoir was entitled "Behind God's Back," the way Eastern Europeans felt under Soviet domination after the horrors of the Second World War. When first published, the events in the novel were considered too brutal for American readers. Recent unfortunate atrocities no doubt have toughened America to face global truths without borders.
