Fate’s Far Winds

Description

The carefully orchestrated and compartmentalized life of brilliant and elusive Dr. Sasha Borodin has been thrown into disarray. Regrets about having a second child at 64, at the same time he is to become a grandfather, and of retiring from the hospital boat that has been his home for more than three decades, come too late. His now wife, Katya, has helped him unite with his older son, stolen at birth during the Vietnam War by his grandfather, a North Vietnamese general. Khai is also a highly protected inventor, touch phobic, and is autistic. Sasha denies his own neurodivergence. A peaceful first-time family vacation in Japan with Khai, daughter-in-law Lan, Katya, and two former colleagues from his medical boat, the Trib, turns deadly, with an obsessive collector on his tail, willing to kill to obtain his prized violin. The Stradivarius violin is a fellow survivor of Bergen-Belsen with a provenance as unknown as his own; the violin had belonged to his teacher, who died of typhus. Sasha’s SS tormenter took perverse pleasure in forcing prisoners at gunpoint to teach the precocious child. Sasha has searched in vain for his family history and real name.
A near fatal birthing almost robs him of Katya, and Sasha comes to avoid their silent, passive child, Gavi, as blond and as Russian-looking as he is, fearing brain damage or severe autism. S- Branch, his Australian government security agency, has helped him hide his genius and musical talents, but the siren call of fame he has evaded his entire life might lead him to the fulfillment of his dreams… or into madness. Sasha turns selfish, secretive, and even more obsessive. Her love and loyalty pushed to the limit, Katya must reexamine her own life and decide who she will become, with or without Sasha. Private rehearsals with the San Francisco Symphony as stand-in for the soloist results in an unexpected public performance in a violin concerto and leads to his “outing” as a genius inventor, the man behind the exciting green-energy developments and supersonic jets. His war against human traffickers and slavers and his control of four refugee and rehabilitation centers remain secret. Sasha’s international celebrity is short-lived––his calls for action against Climate Change, and public tirades against inequity, injustice, and polluting industries earn him more enemies.
Guilt over his treatment of Katya and Gavi, lies about his first wife, and a successful attempt to destroy his reputation send Sasha into a deep depression. Sasha is forced to try and make an uneasy peace with his horrific childhood in Bergen-Belsen, to recover long-repressed memories. Blown by the winds of Fate, Sasha and Katya seek peace from the violence of their past and their way back to each other.
Fate’s Far Winds is the second in a Fate series following the extraordinary Sasha Borodin, introduced in A Question of Fate––musician, surgeon, prolific inventor, and tormented Holocaust survivor and the anything but ordinary woman who saves his life, the formidable Katya Kaplan Zhang.