Triptych - Softcover

Liesche, Margit

Softcover

ISBN 10: 146420179X ISBN 13: 9781464201790

Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press, 2013

Synopsis

TRIPTYCH paints portraits of two sets of mothers and daughters:  the first, caught up in the brutalities of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and the second, in 1980s Chicago, dealing with the lingering effects of the Revolution and trail of secrets left behind.
 
Budapest, 1956.  A national uprising against Soviet occupiers and their reign of terror is underway. Eleven-year-old Evike and her firebrand 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, Evike spins a story to deflect attention from her mother's revolutionary activities. This story will irrevocably alter lives and reach its tentacles, 30 years later, into the life of Ildiko Palmay.
 
Chicago, 1986. Ildiko, 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 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. 

About this title

From the Author:

Triptych was conceived at a summer writer's workshop with this exercise prompt: 'My mother never...' I quickly added, 'lived in the same world as me.' My parents ended up in the States by default, as refugees, after they were forced to leave their missionary post in China, and Soviet-ruled Hungary refused to allow them to return. In her adopted country, my mother never seemed to fit in. She clung to Old World traditions and, if you asked her, 'home' was always in Hungary.
 
The workshop sentence grew into a page. Then the magic click. I realized I wanted to write about a mother-daughter relationship, specifically about how a refugee mother's sense of loss and displacement might influence her daughter's life choices and character. The page blossomed into a chapter that helped to define the early mother-daughter relationship between Edit and Ildiko, a driving force behind Triptych.

From the Back Cover:

As a young woman living near Chicago, Ildiko Palmay feels strangely disconnected from herself. Even her romances seem transient. She struggles with her family's mysterious past, stretching from the Hungarian revolution, to China, and into life as refugees in America where she was born. She carries the guilt that has tormented her since her mother's death beneath the wheels of a train. Was it suicide? Accident? Murder?
 
Ildiko discovers clues in an elaborate triptych of three panels embroidered by her mother. Now she must untangle a bloody history of secrets and betrayals, following the trail her mother took 30 years earlier, searching through family roots in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and into a knot of wartime agonies that still permeate their Chicago neighborhood.
 
Along the way, Ildiko faces another unexplained death, and meets a magnetic man who may not be what he seems. Eventually she arrives in the Russian-occupied city of Budapest. There, she pieces together details from Chicago with the unfamiliar story of eleven-year-old Evike and her firebrand mother Franceska during the '56 Revolution.
 
Evike and Franceska stole deep into battle zones to help freedom fighters armed with primitive weapons and desperate courage against the heavy artillery of Russian troops. How is their story tied to Ildiko's past and future?
 
Reflecting today's world of civil wars and revolutions, Ildiko's investigation illuminates courageous individuals who fought against tyranny, while also showing the dark side of insurgency, and the continuing ripples that haunt the next generation. She tracks a lost locket, old photographs, news and records, memories, and her own sense of authenticity as her search stretches across the globe.
 
The author of Lipstick and Lies and Hollywood Buzz, WWII home front mysteries featuring the engaging WASP pilot Pucci Lewis and highly praised for their authenticity, Margit Liesche has appeared on PBS' History Detectives program. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

About this edition

• Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 146420179X
• ISBN 13: 9781464201790
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496