"We lived all day long in our private kingdom. . . . Later on, of course, we all said that everything that happened then was on account of the Turks. But on looking back I can see that the whole thing actually began when the Americans came to live in . . . the Villa Pandora."

The summer of 1922: Greece was at war with Turkish Anatolia, but in Kifissia, the suburb of Athens where Nikolas lived with his mother, the days were long and sleepy. Kifissia was elegant, but Nikolas was not. His mother was the caretaker of the Villa Pandora.

That summer the Averys of Boston—Oliver, his parents, and his cousin Edith—rented the villa. Soon after, new arrivals appeared next door: the beautiful Madame Arnauld, her daughters Nadine and Stephanie, and their mysterious "uncle." High-spirited and bored, the five children decided to form a secret society called the Pallikars, and suddenly Nikolas felt as if he had leaped into something unknown, something that might change him forever. 

The Pallikars vowed to do secret good, to wage war against suffering, injustice, and certain grown-ups. They wanted to have an adventure that would transform their lives, but it was all a game, really, until the Turks burned the Greek city of Smyrna, and thousands of refugees flooded into Greece. The suffering of the refugees affected all Greece, even the sleepy gardens of Kifissia, and when that happened, the true adventures of the Pallikars began.

In this moving novel of unusual beauty and affection, Edward Fenton writes of a boy's first glimpse into a romantic and yet frightening world, and of the growing acceptance of his own heritage.

From the dust jacket