Summary

Karen tells future Jacob the story of her grandparents. Her grandfather, Janos was intelligent, independent, and popular as a child, and developed a crush on a girl called Lina who surrounded herself with ugly friends, making herself seem even more beautiful. Janos dreamed of marrying Lina one day. Karen breaks away from the story briefly to describe some Hungarian history for Jacob, and then tells him how his great-grandparents and Janos were gathered for concentration camps, but Janos’ father gave him his platinum ring and told him to run away. Janos did not know where to go but somehow survived on his own and without a home. When he returned to Budapest, the city had been bombed and was just a shell of what he had known it to be. Some American soldiers came across him, saw him as sound of mind and...