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Prologue. Ari and Gyula’s family— the Fábos (FAH-BŌSH) family—was right in the middle: in the middle class, in the middle of Hungary, in the middle of Europe, and in the middle of some of the most catastrophic years in Hungary’s (and Europe’s) history. Their personal experiences help us understand a larger history.

Backstory. “Backstory” details the story of Hungarians arriving to the Carpathian Basin and questions the myths that make up Hungary’s official narrative. It discusses the Fábos family’s geographic surroundings near Lake Balaton, where they worked the land as serfs on a noble Széchényi estate.

1848: Hungarian Spring.Throughout Europe, the huge inequalities between millions of destitute serfs and a small, powerful nobility lead to revolutions in 1848 and 1849. In Hungary, the 1848 Revolution is also spurred by Magyar nationalism and desires for greater autonomy from Austria. Even though the Habsburg Empire prevails, the Emperor concedes to some demands, ending serfdom and opening up land for some former serfs to farm. That’s how the Fábos family receive their land--a piece of swamp by Lake Balaton.

1867: Peasant Possibilities. Farming communities throughout Hungary (including the Fábos family) are buoyed by many new agricultural inventions and practices. As some peasant landholders become more successful, a new class system emerges. Meanwhile, Hungarian (Magyar) nationalism grows and, helped by Empress Elisabeth of Austria, leads to the formation of the “dual” Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867.

1900: Millennial Modernity. A new agricultural work ethic emerges in the countryside, while Budapest explodes with culture, industry, and innovation. At the same time, a thriving Jewish financial class causes an already nationalistic Magyar nobility to become increasingly spiteful towards Jews and other ethnicities. Meanwhile, the Fábos family is able to buy drier land and get out of the swamp!

1914: Home Fronts and War Fronts. Large empires and smaller nation-states, engaged in a series of overlapping rivalries and alliances, dive into World War I. The Austro-Hungarian Empire relies most heavily on troops from the countryside; István Fábos is dispatched to the awful Doberdo battle in the Italian Alps while his wife, Regina, and son Pista take over the farm. István comes home alive, but with irreversible PTSD.

1918: Revolution and Counterrevolution. The horrors of WWI, combined with Spanish Flu and tuberculosis epidemics, food and labor shortages, and inflation, turn Europe (and Hungary) upside down. Hungarians hurl themselves into socialist and then communist revolutions, and then a Red Terror.

1920: Traumatic Losses. The Treaty of Trianon reduces Hungary to two-thirds its former size-- a punishment for the country’s alliance with Germany in WWI. Regent Miklós Horthy attempts to restore order by bringing back vestiges of the old class system. During the limited post-war economic recovery, the Fábos family manages to double the size of their farm in their town of Marcali. But the Horthy regime supports the White Terror backlash against communists, Jews, and women. Meanwhile, members of the Magyar elite become more actively anti-Semitic and nationalistic.

1930: Deal with the Devil. Gyula and Ari--the main characters in the Proud & Torn story--are born. Their family’s farm thrives even more with a new threshing business and profitable markets in Germany, while Hungarian leaders become increasingly cozy with Hitler in pursuit of gaining back lost territories.

1940: Wonderful, Murderous Continent. WWII arrives in Europe just as the Fábos family reaches the pinnacle of their wealth and status--represented by a new camera, a new car, and boarding school for Ari and Gyula. Meanwhile, Hitler rewards Horthy’s “friendship” with chunks of lost territory. Ari and Gyula’s father, Pista, is in the motorcade that recaptures Transylvania and Hungary passes three appalling and frightful anti-Semitic laws against Jews.

1944: Cataclysm. Germany invades its ally, Hungary, and with major help from Hungarian collaborators immediately take steps to annihilate Hungary’s Jews, including 184 Jews in the Fábos family’s home town of Marcali. By the end of 1944, Hungary’s fascist Arrow Cross control the country and WWII arrives at the Fábos family’s doorstep.

1945: Reckoning. The Soviets bomb Budapest to bits and fight some of their last battles against the Germans (called the “Balaton Offensive”) on the Fábos family farm. Hungary is liberated but occupied by the Soviet Red Army. It holds democratic elections and the Fábos’ favorite candidate, who supports private smallholder farms, wins a landslide victory.

1946: Emerging from the Rubble. Hungarian citizens face inflation and starvation, the Hungarian Communist Party rigs elections and takes political control, and the aristocratic class flees the country. Gyula attends agronomy school in a castle formerly occupied by the nobility, and Ari exchanges potatoes for silverware with the noble family that used to control her serf ancestors. It is the beginning of a new world order.

1949: Expropriation. The Communist Party authorities target the Fábos family farm, jail and tortured Gyula and his father, Pista, and imprison Pista indefinitely. This pattern of labeling landowners as “kulaks” and “enemies of the state” is repeated all over Hungary. Ari saves the day by stealthily encouraging her brother, from a window across the alley, to withstand the torture.

1950: Socialist Utopia. Communist leader Matyás Rákosi enforces the Communist Party’s Stalinist five-year “planned economy.” The Agricultural Plan forces peasant families to turn over their personal farms to huge, state-run, highly mechanized farming operations. The Industrial Plan moves thousands of displaced farmworkers to mining and quarry jobs and large urban factories. Ari and Gyula’s father, Pista, is sent to forced labor in a quarry. Living standards decrease everywhere.

1953: A New Course. Hungarian Communists successfully dismantle private enterprise and disrupt the entire country’s economy. Backlash ensues and the Communists ease up on repression, but only for a short time. Fábos family members are assigned to work on a state farm, while Ari has new career opportunities in Budapest.

1956: Rise Up. Ari finds herself the midst of the Hungarian Revolution on the streets of Budapest as she makes her way home from the circus; Gyula experiences the revolution from the countryside, building Molotov cocktails to send to the capital. When the Russians crush the revolution, Gyula is forced to flee while Ari is forced (by her father’s orders) to stay back in Hungary.

Epilogue. Gyula travels by boat to America; Ari stays in Budapest. The two siblings lead separate lives on different continents, Ari as an artist for the Hungarian State Statistical Office and Gyula as a landscape architecture professor. Gyula occasionally visits Hungary with his American family and acquires land in the United States to compensate for the land that his family lost there. Despite the distance and the different hardships they endured, they remain best friends.