The book (fiction) tells an engaging original story an epic sweeping drama with
character driven pictures
 During the 1930s Baron Jacques Chavalmont the wealthy and respected
President and Chief Executive of an infl uential private merchant bank in Paris
became concerned by developments in Germany and meticulously crafted a plan
for the survival of his extended family should a war ensue.
 The Plan required the transfer of substantial assets bullion, currencies, art and
jewelry for safekeeping in the Barons Bank (The Bancario di Milano) in Buenos
Aires. The Baron arranged for his ambitious son-in-law Caetano di Rosario to
manage the Bancario.
 The book narrates how its characters a disparate group of talented men and
women from Italy, Germany, Latvia, and Entre Rios (Argentina): Caetano Di
Rosario, his wife Marie-Helene, their son Alain, Max Elman and his paramour
Francine, Dr. Manfred Lowen, and Kathleen McCloud (from Entre Rios) converged
on Buenos Aires during the 1930s. It relates their dreams, hopes, frustrations,
passions, romances, adultery, greed and dishonesty.
 It describes how the new Buenos Aires residents successfully adapted to their
new environment and how their lives interacted over time against the backdrop of
events (leading to and after the Second World War) which took place in England,
France, Germany, Monte Carlo, Latvia, Israel and Buenos Aires.
The immigrants never saw their loved families again Most had perished
in the Holocaust
 After the end of the Second World War a small group of European family
survivors sued Caetano di Rosario and the Bancario in Buenos Aires for the recovery
of their families deposited assets. The fully described litigation process culminated
in a most interesting denouement that directly aff ected Caetano, Marie-Helene,
Alain, Kathleen, Manfred and Sandra