This is the true story of the unlikely life of man whose single teenage mother from a German settlement in Paraguay cedes as a baby for adoption to a yerba mate trader who takes him to Buenos Aires. The reader navigates the difficulties that he overcomes following his foster father death and his rise from abject poverty to business success. This book illustrates the drama of a highly unusual life story while providing a glimpse of life in rural Paraguay in the early 1900's, in Buenos Aires in its "golden age", and in La Plata, Argentina, during the tyranny of Perón and the three decades that followed his regime.