Gamaliel Friedman is only a child when his family flees Czechoslovakia
in 1939 for the relative safety of Hungary. For him, it will be the
beginning of a life of rootlessness, disguise, and longing. Five years
later, in desperation, Gamaliel's parents entrust him to a young
Christian cabaret singer named Ilonka. With his Jewish identity hidden,
Gamaliel survives the war. But in 1956, to escape the stranglehold of
communism, he leaves Budapest after painfully parting from Ilonka.
Gamaliel tries, unsuccessfully, to find a place for himself in Europe.
After a failed marriage, he moves to New York, where he works as a
ghostwriter, living through the lives of others. Eventually he falls in
with a group of exiles, including a rabbi--a mystic whose belief in the
potential for grace in everyday life powerfully counters Gamaliel's
feelings of loss and dispossession. When Gamaliel is asked to help draw
out an elderly, disfigured Hungarian woman who may be his beloved
Ilonka, he begins to understand that a real life in the present is
possible only if he will reconcile with his past.