"As a child, award winning journalist Alan Weisman had often heard his father tell the family legend of how Communists murdered his grandfather in the Ukraine. But years later, he meets a long-estranged uncle who recounts a very different version. His search to determine the truth leads Weisman from his Minnesota boyhood to Chernobyl and finally back to the monstrous pogroms of the Russian Revolution. On the way, he learns that many of his family's stories have been altered, and discovers a universal reality: that all immigrant families, in order to survive in a new world, must create protective myths like the one that hides the true fate of his grandfather."--BOOK JACKET. "While unraveling his own tangled heritage, Weisman's work for a National Public Radio series titled Vanishing Homelands introduces him to a new generation of immigrants wrenched from their native soil, all desperate to reinvent themselves. These encounters become a resonant counterpoint to Weisman's personal search. His often harrowing adventures in places like rebel-torn Colombia and even under Antarctica's ozone hole strangely begin to echo his father's saga through turn-of-the-century Russia, the Depression, World War II, and the McCarthy era. Ultimately, they help to reveal his family's truth, and show how history - and secrets - echo through generations."--BOOK JACKET.