Heinrich Schliemann is the only character of significance in The Waffs of Windy Troy. When he is nine years old, his mother dies; meanwhile, his father, a minister, becomes implicated in a murky scandal concerning misappropriation of church funds. With his mother dead and his father preoccupied, Schliemann is sent to live with his uncle, the pastor Friederich Schliemann of Kalkhorst. But when Schliemann turns fourteen, the pastor concludes that his nephew has had enough schooling. Schliemann becomes a grocer's apprentice in Furstenberg, a small village about a hundred and fifty miles from Hamburg, where he works for five years until a barrel falls on his chest, damaging his lungs. Let go by the grocer, Schliemann journeys to Hamburg and books passage on a ship to Venezuela. When the ship runs aground off the Dutch island of Texel, the nineteen-year-old Schliemann is left destitute...