Hardcover Mystery
ISBN 0-9661879-6-2, 332 pages
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Petras Simonaitis, a young Lithuanian artisan struggling to support his mother and sister, faces the impossible task of coming into manhood under first Nazi and then Soviet domination. Baron Pavel Gerulaitis, a Nazi sympathizer and rich landowner, desires to sire Aryan children although he has dark hair and eyes. When the Baron convinces Petras’s sister Ona to live at his castle and be groomed as his future wife, Petras feels powerless to save her. The Baron’s first wife and child – a dark child – die mysteriously. Then Ona’s body is found floating in the river – at the hands of the Baron, Petras believes.

Petras is a Protestant – in a Catholic country – struggling with his faith. He is friends with Joelis, a young Jew, in spite of the taboo against such friendships. Joelis tries to convince Petras and his friend Kazys to help form labor unions to strengthen the country against the rise of communism, but Kazys sneers at their idealism and Petras becomes too overwhelmed with the threats to his loved ones' lives to fight for unions.

Rima, the young woman Petras loves, also disappears into the Baron’s castle. Rima becomes pregnant with the Baron’s child, but Petras marries her and they flee Šiauliai. Rima begins her lifelong struggle with depression, yet for a short time they live a quiet idyll in the forest of Birzai, until the child Gintaras is born and the Baron and the Nazis intrude upon them.