Spanning almost a hundred years from pre-Revolutionary Russia, this memoir presents a real-life family drama: fleeing Kiev under Nazi attack with an aristocratic mother married to a member of Stalin's secret police, a son’s life is lived out from refugee camp to New York to Minnesota between the contrasting poles of his father’s fanatical dedication to Marxist ideology and his mother’s all-pervading narcissism. Like an absorbing detective story, tell-tale clues slowly accumulate over the years that point to the father’s secret past identity and beyond — a fascinating story in itself that proves once again that truth is stranger than fiction. ROGER BENNINGTON was born in Kiev, Ukraine, as Igor Babichev, and was educated in New York City and at the University of Minnesota, where he received his BA cum laude in Philosophy in 1960. He began his writing career as an advertising copywriter in 1963 and later worked as a science writer and editor. Much admired for his multi-dimensional life stories, he continues to pursue his lifelong interests in philosophy, psychology, and religion.