This book chronicles the lives of a Jewish family, the Kovacs, living on a small farm southwest of Budapest during the 1880's. Their lives were profoundly impacted by the extraordinary circumstances that occurred during the first half of the twentieth century.... The catastrophe of World War One, the horrors wrought by the Spanish flu, and the atrocities of World War Two took the lives of untold millions. The lives of those who were fortunate to survive were forever changed. One hundred years ago, what was intended to be a small regional conflict between the belligerent nations of Serbia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, quickly evolved into one of the most decisive, but least understood events of the twentieth century. The so called "Great War" or "the war to end all wars" became a war of endless slaughter where twenty million people forfeited their lives for little or no gain. The war forever altered the physical landscape of Europe and created the collapse of empires that had existed for centuries. It also brought forth the worst global pandemic the world had seen since the bubonic plague of the fourteenth century, killing millions more. World War One, The Treaty of Versailles, The Treaty of Trianon, and the Great Depression provided fertile ground for the social, economic, and political unrest leading Europe and ultimately the United States into World War Two. We still hear the echoes of that dark and dangerous period today, and how our sense of humanity remains in question.