Content: journey homeward

Summary:

After an absence of two decades, a trip back to his native Romania is both daunting and irresistible to Luca Leontin, a Boston architect, accomplished artist, and libertine. Stirred by memories, he flies to Zurich in August 2001 and embarks on a train bound for Bucharest. During the trip, he becomes enmeshed in the designs of a group of characters that prove to be more than travel companions. Meanwhile, a personal memoir he has been writing, and now rereads between train stops, takes him on a parallel journey into his own past, raising both memories and questions. What has become of Daria, the goddess-like creature of his adolescence? Where is Alecu now, the brilliant artist whom Luca could never quite accept as a mentor? And what of Maia from his college years, who left him for a better prospect? Luca’s homecoming is far from what he’d anticipated. What he remembers as a city of austerity and simple habits has died with the fall of the Iron Curtain. In the new Bucharest, the boulevards shine with glitz, and decayed buildings are veneered with the symbols of Western glamour. Drab-looking restaurants with two-item menus have been replaced with stylish lounges where almond-shaped eyes glimmer in semidarkness and long, bronzed legs set Luca’s heart racing. No sooner does he set foot in his native city than his recent travel companions use his weakness for female beauty to lure him into an undercover operation that nearly costs him his life. Luca is shocked to learn that his ordeal has occurred through the agency of one person—Alecu, the man who has never forgiven him for a long-ago act of audacity. Luca’s brush with death makes him aware that he owes his predicaments to a lifelong indulgence in his desires. As his vacation nears its last days, a shocking confession, an unexpected gift from Alecu, and the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy bring about the resolution Luca has always yearned for—the awakening of his long-dormant character.

Chapters: