Denise B. Dailey Knihy

Set against the backdrop of World War II, the narrative follows a young French girl in Brazil, blissfully unaware of the devastation affecting her family in France. The death of her mother shatters her idyllic childhood, revealing a hidden legacy that leads to loss of homeland, culture, and connections. As she navigates her displacements, the story explores themes of identity and belonging, with Guanabara Bay symbolizing the profound loss of what is cherished. The journey becomes a quest to uncover her family's secrets and understand her heritage.

A biography of a Czech artist educated in the 1920s and `30s in the most artistically revolutionary capitals of the world: Vienna, Berlin, Prague, Paris, who gets caught in the Nazi dragnet through his marriage to a Czech Jew. The story follows their double exiles, first to war-time England, and then to the United States, where they delight and despair over re-establishing Riko as a first-class artist in the radically evolving cultural decades from the `50s to the `80s.