Triptych

Book excerpt: Triptych paints parallel portraits of two sets of mothers and daughters caught up in the brutalities of the Hungarian revolution. The story shifts from 1956 Budapest to 1986 Chicago and Budapest, illuminating courageous individuals who battled against tyranny, while also showing the dark side of insurgency, and the continuing ripples that haunt the next generation. Budapest, 1956. A national uprising against Soviet occupiers and their reign of terror is underway. Eleven-year-old Évike and her rebrand mother steal deep into battle zones in support of civilian freedom fighters armed only with primitive weapons and desperate courage against the heavy artillery of trained Russian troops. Taken in for interrogation by the secret police, Évike spins a story to deflect attention from her mother's revolutionary activities. This story will irrevocably alter lives and reach its tentacles, thirty years later, into the life of Ildikó Palmay. Chicago, 1986. Ildikó, 37, a librarian and ESL teacher is the American-born daughter of Hungarian refugees. Unsettled by her life and her romantic failures, she finds herself unexpectedly drawn back to her roots, first to the Hungarian neighborhood of her youth in Chicago--and eventually to the Russian-occupied city of Budapest. Along the way, she meets a magnetic man who may not be what he seems, uncovers a trail of secrets and betrayals forged in the uprising, and discovers the shocking truth about her mother's death. Triptych is about survival, displacement, the corrosive nature of secrets and, ultimately, the healing power of forgiveness.