The truth about Ferentz
Ferentz is a Roma. A Gypsy, as the world says it. Born in 1960, raised in communist Romania, where nothing was given and everything had to be found.
Under communism the shops stood empty and the state pretended otherwise. People still needed materials, and they needed things moved, and the house of Ferentz provided both. Copper and metal, bought, moved, sold. Transport for whoever asked. Romanian, Roma, or Jew, it made no difference at that door. He did what he had to do, in years when doing it took nerve, and whole streets were glad he did.
When the country cracked open in 1989, he was ready before the ink dried on the new money. Cheap cars out of Germany, driven east and sold to people who had waited a lifetime to own one. Copper and materials, carried to wherever a rebuilding country paid best. Understand what that meant, in the language of your own years. Being in copper and cars across freshly opened borders was like being in Bitcoin in 2010, or in the little internet shops of 2020, before the crowd found them. Early is its own kind of intelligence. Ferentz has been early all his life.
Every story in the book is true. The family, the years, the money lost and the money made. Nothing invented, nothing dressed up for effect.