To Antoine

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