American pastoral: Swede Levov is wrenched from the tranquility of his domestic life and into the turbulent 1960s by his cherished daughter, an antiwar terrorist. I married a Communist: A story of betrayal set in America's anti-Communist 1940s, the story recounts the rise and fall of radio star Ira Ringold, exposed by his wife as "an American taking his orders from Moscow." The human stain: Set in 1998, when America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president; in a small New England college town an aging classics professior, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist.