Publisher's Synopsis
The Spoon is based on a true story, two people incongruously brought together during the maelstrom of what we now know as the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Their story is remembered and shared through the generations when the family gathers each year for Christmas.
Post WWII Hungary is a country beleaguered in the aftermath of the Warsaw Pact. Ever since, both the citizens and the economy of Hungary have been in a downward spiral under Soviet rule. People live in fear at work, at school, at home. Even as young children, Hungarians are taught not to speak or discuss anything political. A largely rural populace equally shares the trials and dangers of post-war Hungary with its urban neighbors. Rural Hungarians must meet rigid, unreasonable agricultural quotas just as their urban neighbors must meet similar factory quotas. The result is a breakdown in the economy, culture, and quality of life for every Hungarian.
Rebeka and her family have lived in the countryside for generations. While they had once been farmers then successful horsebreeders, they lost everything during that time when Soviet occupation replaced German occupation. Rebeka, with her parents, siblings, and beloved grandparents, escape to a small village of no consequence hoping for a peaceful life. A decade later, broad sweeping Soviet policies would soon upend their world with devastating effect.
Meanwhile, Péter and his sister, Júlia, are both university students whose extended family lives in Budapest. The siblings are involved with student groups which have been discussing the plight of all Hungarians and the recent, disastrous Polish worker protests turned violent. The Hungarian student unions decide to peacefully march through Budapest in solidarity with their Polish neighbors and to demand human rights and economic policy changes.
As a result, news of the impending student march reaches the countryside. There, young men yearn for their imprisoned fathers and long to throw off the yoke of Soviet oppression. Across the country, Hungarians make their way to Budapest to join the protest march. Rebeka soon finds herself an unwilling participant in that march.
However, despite peaceful intentions, the student march turns violent when Soviet soldiers fire into the crowd. The Hungarian citizens prove victorious. Their spirit, devotion, and patriotism prevail. Wielding little more than farm implements and tools the protestors turned Freedom Fighters overcome the seemingly overwhelming odds of Soviet tanks, troops, and the despised secret police. However, Soviet leaders are duplicitous. Soviet tanks and troops are massing at the border. The brokered peace is only a ruse.
From the start, Rebeka and Péter are often in the same place at the same time. When the worst happens, they are driven from their country, their only hope for survival to leave their ancestral homeland. They will journey across a frozen landscape as refugees and, again, across the Atlantic, as immigrants to a new life in America. Although their paths take different routes, serendipity will ultimately prevail and one small family heirloom will come to represent their will to survive.
