El emperador de Alegría

It is summer in East Joy, a corner of New England where time seems to have stood still and the spirits of the past wander among abandoned cars. East Joy rises from a strip of land along the Connecticut River; spanning the river is a freight bridge named after the Wampanoag chief who led a rebellion to reclaim his territory from the Puritans; and atop the bridge stands nineteen-year-old Hai, swinging a leg over the railing after deciding to jump from a height of thirty meters. Then, suddenly, something interrupts what seemed inevitable: a voice from the other side of the river. It belongs to Grazina, an elderly woman lost in the labyrinths of memory, haunted by recollections of a distant war and her native Lithuania.