America with its strange food, impossible-to-understand English, and terrifying school -- bullies the size of football players -- is the last place Emile de Bonnery wants to be. Even finding a friend is small comfort. For he belongs back in France, living in the Lyon chateau with grandmother Mamie Madeleine.

He longs to be close to Papa, who comes and goes at the whim of his mysterious work. He wants to hear the story of the watch -- the birthday present Papa gave him two months before his fourteenth birthday. Always before Papa was there to tell him the stories behind his curious birthday presents. But a few days after he got the watch, he and Mama had to leave. “He’s taken up with another woman,” Mamie Madeleine told him. Then she sent Mama and him home to Atlanta to live with Grandma Bridgeman. Now Papa is out of his life entirely.

Elizabeth Musser begins Searching for Eternity by plunging us into these early days of Emile de Bonnery’s in 1960s Atlanta. She goes on to tell the story of how Emile makes his fatherless way through the next decades.

The plot is captivating, full of surprises and set within actual historical events. Despite appearances, Emile is sure that his father is really a spy and in trouble. After all, he was part of the French Resistance during the war and has always disappeared without explanation for weeks on end. Only this time he hasn’t come back.

Eternity, his one friend, a girl who is as much of an outcast as he is, mocks his theory until they make a discovery about his birthday watch. Eternity has her own issues which complicate things and entrench her and her siblings firmly into Emile’s world.

We follow Emile closely for the first while and then drop in on him at more sporadic intervals. Several decades after the narrative begins -- at the time of Klaus Barbie’s arrest and subsequent trial in the 1980s -- all the various plot ends tie together.

The characters in the book are strong. Emile, who tells the story in first person, is convincing in his early days of homesickness as he substitutes French words for elusive English ones and aches for the familiar atmosphere, friends, food and family of Lyon. Our sympathies with him only grow as he matures into a thoughtful young man.

Strong, determined Eternity develops from a somewhat bossy, chip-on-the-shoulder adolescent into a beautiful, accomplished yet always mysterious woman. Grandmother Bridgeman gives the story a firm emotional center with her warmth and wise spiritual counsel. Finally, Jean Baptiste de Bonnery, Emile’s father, overshadows the whole book, though he makes appearances mostly in flashbacks in Emile’s memory.