
Growing up in 1930s Brooklyn Florence Fein will do anything to escape the confining values of her family & her city & create a life of meaning & consequence When a new job & a love affair lead her to Moscow she doesn't think twice about abandoning America
- only to discover years later that America has abandoned her Now as her son Julian travels back to Moscow
- entrusted to stitch together a murky transcontinental oil deal
- he must dig into Florence's past to discover who his mother really was & what she became He must also persuade his own son Lenny to abandon his risky quest for prosperity in the cut-throat Russian marketplace As he traces a thread from Depression-era America through the collective housing & work camps of Stalin's USSR to the glittering oil-rich world of New Russia Julian finally begins to understand the role he has played
- as a father & as a son Epic in sweep & intimate in detail The Patriots is both a compelling portrait of the entangled relationship between America & Russia & a beautifully crafted story of three generations of one family caught between the forces of history & the consequences of past choices