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The Thirteen Club: A Journey from Riches to Rags and Back

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In The Thirteen Club: A Journey From Riches To Rages And Back, Howard Layton traces the family of Colonel Ludanyi as they abandoned of their elegant home, country estate and priceless heirlooms in Hungary during the last days of World War II to cross the western border into Austria in order to escape the Russians. This refugee family was offered an opportunity to care for a string of horses on an estate in Virginia, but by the time they got to America, that opportunity had vanished. Instead, this family of seven found themselves on a small dairy farm where the older children had to pitch in with their parents and work just for their basic needs of food and shelter. Eventually the family moved to New York to improve their opportunities, including one daughter's enrollment at a college in Elmhurst, Illinois -- living on potatoes and over-sweetened coffee just so she could pay her tuition. From graduation to her first important job in industry and move back to New York where she meets a British immigrant and sets about building a high-tech manufacturing business. The Thirteen Club is a fascinating, engaging, highly recommended, deeply personal story of struggle, triumph and disaster, of heady success and bankruptcy, and eventual and arduous return to affluence and the American Dream.