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It's 1940 and the German war machine has steamrolled through Belgium, the Netherlands and France. Young Anton's father and grandfather disappear for extended periods; slowly Anton realizes that they are assisting in the resistance against their Nazi occupiers. Late at night Anton delivers bars of soap in which are hidden messages for fellow saboteurs.
Anton's mother, Lily, is choked and slapped by a sergeant of the Vichy government after calling him a pig in a café. When she's murdered during interrogation, Anton's father retaliates by bombing the Prefecture of Police. Shortly thereafter Anton meets a young woman named Marie who has been sleeping out-of-doors. He welcomes her into his home and the two begin a relationship that lasts the duration of the war. But as American tanks roll into Paris, Marie is kidnapped and presumed dead. Anton heads for the U. S., where he enrolls in college, flirts and starts his own business. Then, one day, he opens a fashion magazine and sees a familiar face.
The first half of this book, which follows the actions of several resistance fighters and their attempts to outwit the Nazis, is full of exciting incident. Impressively, Pershall manages to sustain a similar level of intrigue during much of the second half, as Anton enjoys postwar prosperity and seeks revenge against a high-ranking Nazi official. The scenes depicting his first years in America are some of the best in the book. There's a powerful nostalgia at work in the sweeping vistas and suburban idylls of the late 1940s and 1950s, but also a sense of something rotten at the heart of the American dream: Anton is badly bullied by some young men who ridicule him for being French. Several of the female characters suffer from a lack of depth, and the occasional sex scene feels tonally out of place, but Pershall's scope and ambition are laudable.