The Watchmaker's Time

In early 1945, a tall American sailor with an easy gait and a warm smile came walking through the Allied front lines bearing an unlikely message from a German intelligence general.

"The Watchmaker's Time" is based upon the fictional representation of that sailor, and his family, over a period of about seventy years.

The story begins during WW II. Yuri Zarkov is a Navy ensign who finds himself behind enemy lines in northern Italy and falls in love with a local woman, even though his wife and two children await him at home. A number of remarkable events overtake the ensign, yet he is never portrayed as more than an ordinary individual who occasionally has to perform extraordinary deeds, such as fleeing his captors in Nazi Germany in the closing days of the war, and later rescuing a German army general from Russian captivity.

Postwar Italian politics, with its intrigues by the communist party, provide a backdrop for the adventures of Yuri.

As Yuri sails back to the US with a new bride he tells her about his family's history. The eldest Zarkov, Yuri's father, was a bodyguard to the tsar Nicholas II who attempted to rescue one of the former ruler's daughters. The story quickly crosses the Russian landscape during the revolution, but lingers on the relationship that develops between the commoner and the royal grand duchess. Vanya's mission fails and, after a brief stay in Lithuania, Vanya emigrates to the United States with his young family.

Historical references to events in Russia and Lithuania are factual, providing the basis for the protagonists' actions.

The progeny of the two men populate the story. Yuri's daughter becomes a successful businesswoman in Silicon Valley, while her son and daughter engage in what is to become a lifelong incestuous relationship. The daughter eventually moves to the USSR and returns to the US as an envoy of the new reformist regime.