To Antoine

Peter Enns, facing judgement as a war criminal, relives his childhood and youth in a Mennonite village during the Stalinist terrors, his early adulthood among genocidal Nazis, his decade-long sojourn among refugees in the Paraguayan Chaco, and finally his troubled success as a teacher in Canada. While he awaits his fate he struggles with his judgement upon himself, haunted by looming figured from his Mennonite past, by memories of his lost loves in war-torn Europe, and by his strained relationships with his daughter and his Jewish friend in Canada. And above all, he is haunted by the shrouded presence of Antoine, his mentor and idol during his youth and early adulthood.