Young Austrian male embarks on a journey to United States in search of his family. He has only scant and contradictory information about his grandfather Leslav lost in the turmoil after WWII. The first search trip to US ends in a fiasco. Subsequently, with help of Jewish friends, he was able to find diary of his late grandfather. During the second trip the Austrian is able to interview the surviving members of his Yankee Family: grandfather's mistress Lydia, her daughter Claire, her son Tom. He also gets access to legal file of Lydia's husband, Milton. The novella is a series of psychological portraits of key members of the lost and distant family whose lives were mysteriously woven together. The Leslav's dairy brings to light his multiple identities: an aristocrat from Eastern Europe, a Volksdeutche collaborator, a mental patient in Swiss Psychoanalytical Clinic, a painter and a precursor of expressive abstractionists, an agent of clandestine Nazi organization placing and supporting former Nazi officials in Argentina after the war. He was also Lydia's lover and fathered two children by her. Lydia, grandfather's lover, an anorexic woman with three major love affairs in her life, also a psychoanalytic patient and a dedicated breeder of cows in upper New York State. Milton, Lydia's husband, a lawyer, businessman and CIA agent who ultimately takes to bed his own daughter Pat while convinced he was not her father. Claire, Lydia's daughter, whose major wish was to have a "normal life" which happened to be beyond her reach. Upon return to Austria all members of the Yankee Family are brought to life in a Halloween masquerade performed in the ruined chapel of the family castle. The author is a psychiatrist.
About the Author: Jerzy E. Henisz was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1937. His family was in hiding in Romania during World War II, because his father refused to sign-in as an ethnic German during the Nazi occupation of Poland. The Henisz family returned to Poland in 1945, where Jerzy studied psychology and medicine and completed his training in psychiatry. In 1969, Dr. Henisz escaped communist-ruled Poland via Austria and subsequently moved to the United States. In 1970, he was hired by the Department of Psychiatry of the Yale University School of Medicine and served as a Yale faculty member until his retirement in 2003. Doctor Henisz is an author of over forty papers published in psychiatric journals and four books. His literary writings include short stories published in Poland, one play, a novella, and children's stories. He lives with his wife, Anna, in Connecticut, where he was in private practice of psychiatry and psychotherapy since 1983 until his retirement in 2008.