A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True

Late-20th-century Kraków, where every stone and every brick is dear, and whose walls, when gazed upon by Pope John Paul II, inspired a heartfelt tribute. But many years earlier, a young man courted the beautiful Anielica Hetmanska with the promise that his "golden hands" could renovate her family's cottage from the ground up. With patience and persistence, he won her heart, and while World War II frustrated their love, delayed their marriage, and wrought havoc and horror in everyone's lives, the mystery and beauty of Kraków finally became their own. Sadly, those remarkable years would become the barest whisper of a memory for Anielica when tragedy sends her home to her small village.

Fifty years later, their granddaughter Beata journeys to the fairy-tale city that lit up her grandmother's eyes and illuminated her stories. However, Kraków in the new Poland is not the same city Anielica left behind. Caught between poverty and prosperity, history and modernity, and teeming with dissolute youth, 1990s Kraków is cold and unwelcoming. In league with her street-savvy cousin Irena and Magda, Irena's beautiful but troubled daughter, Beata struggles to find a foothold in a rapidly growing city.

Artfully weaving together the strands of Anielica's and Beata's stories, Pasulka has penned an ingenious and involving novel so compelling that readers will be reluctant to turn the last page.