August Epp and Peters’s Father-Son Relationship

August Epp and Peters’s father-son relationship is marked by absence and belated recognition: Peters is August’s biological father, but another man raised August before disappearing. The discovery helps explain why August was sent away from Molotschna Colony, and his return leaves open whether the relationship can become a source of peace rather than shame.

Identity and Separation

August identifies Peters, specifically Peters the younger, as his father, distinguishing him from the man who raised him. The distinction is bound to a history of abandonment: when August was a boy in England, his mother and he were alone after the man who had raised him left, driving himself to the airport and boarding a plane. The text does not describe a relationship between August and Peters during his childhood; instead, Peters’s paternity becomes legible through the consequences it has for August’s place in the colony.

Expulsion and Inherited Shame

August was sent away at twelve, as he approached the colony’s threshold of adulthood. He understands that his family’s expulsion was not simply punishment for his mother’s secret schooling or for showing colonists photographs of paintings by Michelangelo. By then, he closely resembled Peters and had become, in the colony—or at least to Peters—a symbol of shame, violence, unacknowledged sin, and the failure of the Mennonite experiment. His appearance made a concealed relationship publicly consequential: August was treated as a reminder of what the community and his father could not acknowledge.

Return and the Possibility of Peace

Years later, Peters allows August to return to Molotschna Colony. August wonders why Peters permitted it, and whether some part of his father is seeking peace. He cannot know whether that wish is strong or barely present, but considers whether he should remain as a living reminder not of evil, but of God’s grace. The uncertainty matters: return changes August’s position without resolving the history between father and son.

Ona Friesen’s response gives August another way to understand that history. Holding his hand against her pregnant belly, she tells him that she has prayed for him to find grace and regards him as a physical reminder of goodness, hope, and life after violence. She connects that hope to August’s mother and to Peters, rather than to the man who raised August. In the closing movement, August weighs whether faith might mean returning, staying, and serving. He chooses the possibility of being useful while alive—teaching basic reading, writing, and mathematics and organizing games—over the death he had contemplated. His decision to remain does not settle what Peters feels; it makes reconciliation a possibility August can live toward.