Family Madness - Thomas Keneally

The fatal and desperate politics of Eastern Europe collide with the comparative innocence and complacency of suburban Australian life in this powerful and disturbing love story about two families and the madness that invades their lives.

Terry Delaney leads a relatively satisfying life as a security guard and as a passionate rugby player with a shot at pro-team success. But Terry's life is shaken beyond recognition when he falls obsessively in love with Danielle Kabbel, the daughter of his employer, Rudi Kabbel. Rudi, a half-mad/half-charming immigrant from Eastern Europe, suffers from visions of an impending apocalypse and from the demons of a tormented childhood.

The family madness runs deep, from the Kabbel family patriarch, Stanek, a Nazi collaborator who betrayed his wife to save his own neck, to Rudi's traumatic childhood in which he was a pawn between the Nazis and the Russians. It is into this maelstrom of devastating history and present day insanity that Terry is drawn--to his own desperate peril.