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find out is that he has a sister. She entered a convent years ago and changed her name. The convent is in Arizona, near Phoenix. I send out a probe in her direction via e-mail.

4

    S HE SITS ACROSS FROM ME, SMALL AND DARK . The blond, blue-eyed Kolman men all married black-eyed brunettes. Sister Michaela’s eyes are the same shape as those of her great-grandmother Alice, but they aren’t weighed down with pain. There’s a lively shine to them.
    Sister Michaela is happy to be in New York. Scanning the people, sipping her cup of coffee, turning her head in excitement as a fire truck goes wailing by outside the window. She says at home she sees the same thing every day. The mountain at whose base the convent is located shimmers like a mirage when the air is hot and in winter is coated with snow. A group of clouds can often be seen floating motionless at its peak. The surrounding plain is strewn with rocks and overgrown with prickly bushes and cactus plants. Sometimes it’s a bloodred, tinted purple; at others, it’s a burnt orange or pale yellow. Twice a year, after the rains, it turns green.
    The convent is a pilgrimage site. People travel the dusty road from Phoenix and Tucson to visit and stay awhile. The convent puts them up in return for a contribution. They can eat and pray with the nuns, learn to make candles and soap, help out in the garden, tend to the convent’s chickens, goats, and donkeys.
    Sister Michaela is wearing a dark travel dress. She left her heavy black-and-white habit at home. Instead of a veil, she wears a beret. The last time she was in New York wastwo years ago, for her father’s funeral. She’s here again now because she needs money.
    â€œI come from a family of millionaires, but still I have to beg my brother for every dollar,” she says. “When I entered the order, my father decided that meant I was mentally unfit, and he wrote me out of his will. At the time, I didn’t care. I didn’t want anything from my family. But I’ve changed my mind since then. Not for myself, but those funds can be put to good use. After my father died, my brother contributed to the convent in his name, thinking that would get me off his back, but no such luck. We’re building a new church, a refectory. . . .The money goes out as fast as it comes in. The mother superior entrusted me with a special mission.”
    â€œThank you for making time for me,” I say. “For being willing to meet.”
    She smiles. “Seeing as you went to the trouble of finding me . . .”
    She is probably in her forties, but as she eagerly drinks in her surroundings, she looks just like a little girl. Only the wrinkles around her eyes give her age away, and her hands, which are slightly red and dried out from working in the dirt, with close-trimmed nails.
    I recount my meeting with John C. Kolman III. She shakes her head.
    â€œWe must seem crazy to you. It’s just that my brother’s incredibly touchy when it comes to our family. He feels like he took over the torch of our family honor from Aunt Ellie. He acts as if the whole world doesn’t care about anything except history, when the truth is that no one could care less what happened in 1892.”
    â€œI do.”
    â€œYou can read about it in any book. The whole thing was described in detail, ages ago. Whether my family talked to the historians or not. You can’t keep the truth quiet for long, not here in America. Whether or not it changes anything is another story.”
    â€œI tracked down everything about it I could,” I say. “How the unions called a strike at the steel works John C. Kolman ran for Carnegie. How your great-grandfather put down the strike, how many workers were killed and how many were fired. I know that Kolman took out ads on Carnegie’s behalf in newspapers in Prague and Warsaw for men to replace the strikers, and that it was the first armed clash between factory