Adam Baumann is a man both of and outside of his time. Born in a German community in Hungary between wars, he lived a primitive childhood. His father was tough, his mother resourceful and tender. His brother and sisters were all good children. But Adam was different. He was larger than the life he was born into. Smart, daring, talented, and hard-working, he struggled against the restrictions of his time, place, and family. All the while he was deeply devoted to them.

An adventurous youngster with nowhere to go, his first departure from home took him across Hungary, where he lived as a stable hand in the house of a Hungarian nobleman… until his explosive father located him. Adam’s attempts to resolve the schism between his extraordinary capacity and the smallness of the world into which he was born would lead him on a series of dangerous escapades, including war captured by the Soviets, deportation out of Hungary, crossing the fence into eastern Germany where the Russians held his sister, and finally, crossing the Atlantic to the new world.

In his adopted home country of Canada, Adam’s never-ending quest for more continued as he struggled to make a living and then surpassed his wildest dreams. With the love of his life at his side, Adam overcame hurdle after hurdle, whilst caring for family spread across two continents. Adam Baumann is a 20th Century hero–a mixture of the ambition and independence of an Ayn Rand hero with the tender heart and family devotion of an ordinary man.

Roxi Harms does a magnificent job of capturing the complexities of Baumann’s character, both the extraordinary and the ordinary. With skill and detail, she brings to life the story of a man who triumphed over the limitations of history to become his greatest self.

— Ginger Moran, author of The Algebra of Snow