The ordinary Eastern European family grapples with extraordinary circumstances from the 1930s to the 1960s. Set in Germany, Poland and the U.S., the author converses with family members weaving back and forth through time. The family perseveres through the world war and the cold war integrating humor with a combination of optimism, determination, courage, ingenuity and love.

The biography’s main character is Bärbel, the author’s mother. Born in a part of eastern Germany named Silesia, her childhood Germany is run by the Nazis and then becomes embroiled in WWII. The small community survives wartime shortages and Hitler’s extremist policies. Then things worsen due to post WWII border changes and her childhood home is suddenly in Poland, under Soviet communist rule. The nineteen-year-old Bärbel is desperate to get out. Her strategy for escape takes her to a West German refugee camp, then Münster, Germany where she meets her future husband, a Serbian former POW now a displaced person. The story follows their marriage and immigration to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the United States with the adventures and culture shock that ensues.

Family members are separated due to politics, border changes and the Iron Curtain, including a twenty-year-old sister alone and homeless in the demolished free West with all communication cut off to the Soviet dominated East. Bärbel’s escape affects the entire family’s history. Each family member has different opportunities and obstacles, but they work separately and together to tirelessly find each members’ way to freedom.