Nine-year-old Elisa tells the story of her family from Upper Silesia beginning in 1939. She immerses the reader in their daily life, from the Nazis' first expropriation of the candy factory through to the end of the war in 1945. Her widowed sister Britta is forced to leave behind her own daughter, who is only 3 years old; she marries a forced laborer who had been deported by the Germans near the border and flees to France. The family is expropriated a second time, this time by the Russians. But the family does not give up. In 1952, Elisa marries department store owner Hugo Werle. In 1954, the Sandor family is expropriated for the third time, as is her husband. Both Hugo's and Elisa's fathers die shortly thereafter. A moving family story about loss, the will to survive, and the unshakable strength to start over again and again.