In 1989 I met Andy, a Romanian computer programmer who, over the course of a few melancholy evenings, told me of his quest for freedom and of his wife and baby left behind two years earlier in his communist homeland. In the fall of that year, communism collapsed in Eastern Europe, and soon Andy’s wife and son arrived in America. Weeks later, the wife asked him to offer temporary shelter to a fellow countryman. Andy agreed, and the visitor spent the next several nights on their living room sofa. One day, the visitor, the wife and the child vanished. Devastated, Andy found out that they had returned to Romania.

I wondered why Carmen, this beautiful young woman, acted the way she did. Had the visitor been her lover, why rejoin the husband after two years apart? If she had come for the benefit of her child, why bring the lover along? If she had planned this wretched triangle to seek a better life in America, why go back?

Was Andy the one to blame? Could I believe his story? Few people leave their families for the sake of freedom alone. Deep personal storms often provoke such actions. Was it possible that my friend had been selfish, immature and clumsy? Was he part of the new generation that emerged from behind the Iron Curtain only to be disappointed by what they found - or could not find - in the land of promise and hope?

I wrote my novel, The Visitor, to understand these people. I described them as attractive, passionate and unpredictable, and told the story from Andy’s point of view. I interspersed present day action in Washington DC, with flashbacks of their youth, fickle love affairs, and rich family history in Romania. I invented luminous sex scenes. In the end, I had Andy, betrayed and hopeless, set ablaze the vestiges of his past. Years later, after rebuilding his life, he travels to Romania to see Carmen, reunite with son, and find answers to his most ardent questions.

Translated into Romanian, the novel was published in May 2011 by Junimea, the venerable publishing house from Iasi. I am humbled and happy that they agreed to represent me. . . ….   I traveled to Bucharest and Iasi for the book launching and signings, and I am posting a few photos from the events, as well as a few comments about the novel from Romanian critics and bloggers. 

The excerpt below is the first chapter of the novel in English.