A story of a life well lived, a man who grew to manhood believing he was an irish catholic, but in fact was a german jew. His story is told around his many achievements, it is not a pretty story there is murder, adultry, rape of an innocent and his struggle when he went to sydney to become an s.p. bookie where he just managed to stay above the violent criminal element that ruled the city that will keep you turning pages. But through it all, it was his lifelong search for his jewish father and his almost frenetic wish for a son of his own that almost broke his spirit, sending him on a downward destructive path into alcholism and cruelty. Then the 2nd world war erupted and he found himself in the most terrifying and brutal encounter he had ever witnessed, but it also gave him a love that was all consuming a love story that will break the reader;s heart, as he struggles with the concept of loving two women, a situation that placed him in a no win situation, but he was a slodier of war and he covered himself with glory in the hot arid deserts of north africa, where he became a hero of sorts but nothing is easy in life least of all war and he soon found himself fighting every day just to stay alive to hopefully return to his love, but again tragedy strikes at him visciously almost destroying his sanity, his struggles against the terrifying concept of being placed in a lunatic asylum for the insane, but help arrives for him in the form of a young american doctor and he is returned to a semblence of sanity, he is repatriated back to australia to try desperatly to resume his life with his family while his heart lies with his lost love buried beneath an old gnarled apricot tree somewhere on the island of crete.