Spanning two continents and three decades, 'The Cloud Sketcher' is an epic tale of love, murder and revenge.
Police stand ready to make an arrest as the liner Ile de France docks at New York Harbor in 1929. The passengers assume that is notorious bootlegger Paul Mantilini who is to be taken away. But Mantilini walks down the gangplank a free man and, instead, it is Esko Vaananen the police arrest - a celebrated architect, and by all accounts a shy and mild-mannered young man.
Born a peasant in rural Finland at the turn of the century, Esko, the son of an outcast Bolshevik, dreamed of skyscrapers and of a beautiful and tragic Russian aristocrat named Katerina. His entire life has been spent pursuing and protecting these twin passions, no matter how great the cost.
It is a journey that has led him into the battlefields of the Bolshevik revolution and the jazz-age nightclubs of New York City, and finally, to strike a Faustian bargain with a ruthless gangster - all in pursuit of artistic perfection and impossible, unattainable love. And now he stands accused of murder . . .
