Jerzy E Henisz

My Yankee Family and Their Stories Jerzy E Henisz

Young Austrian male embarks on a journey to United States in search of his family. He has only scant and contradictory information about his grandfather Leslav lost in the turmoil after WWII. The first search trip to US ends in a fiasco. Subsequently, with help of Jewish friends, he was able to find diary of his late grandfather. During the second trip the Austrian is able to interview the surviving members of his Yankee Family: grandfather's mistress Lydia, her daughter Claire, her son Tom. He also gets access to legal file of Lydia's husband, Milton. The novella is a series of psychological portraits of key members of the lost and distant family whose lives were mysteriously woven together. The Leslav's dairy brings to light his multiple identities: an aristocrat from Eastern Europe, a Volksdeutche collaborator, a mental patient in Swiss Psychoanalytical Clinic, a painter and a precursor of expressive abstractionists, an agent of clandestine Nazi organization placing and supporting former Nazi officials in Argentina after the war. He was also Lydia's lover and fathered two children by her. Lydia, grandfather's lover, an anorexic woman with three major love affairs in her life, also a psychoanalytic patient and a dedicated breeder of cows in upper New York State. Milton, Lydia's husband, a lawyer, businessman and CIA agent who ultimately takes to bed his own daughter Pat while convinced he was not her father. Claire, Lydia's daughter, whose major wish was to have a "normal life" which happened to be beyond her reach. Upon return to Austria all members of the Yankee Family are brought to life in a Halloween masquerade performed in the ruined chapel of the family castle. The author is a psychiatrist.