A Memory of War

Psychologist Alexander Lescziak savors a life of quiet sophistication on Manhattan''s Upper West Side turning a blind eye to the past of his Polish migr parents. Then a new patient declares that he is the doctor''s half-brother the product of a union between Lescziak''s Jewish mother and a German prisoner of war. The confrontation jolts Lescziak out of his complacency: suddenly his failing marriage his wife''s infatuation with his best friend and the disappearance of his young lover and suicidal patient Nella close in on him. Lescziak escapes into the recesses of his imagination where his mother''s affair with the German prisoner comes to life in precise gorgeous detail. The novel unfolds into a romance set in England''s Lake District in wartime as Busch shows how our past presses on the present.