This is a moving tale about mid-19th century Poland, based on the experiences of the author's forebears, during the time when her country was under the yoke of Tsarist oppression. The story is about a young noblewoman, Kamila, in the struggle to retain her inheritance, following the arrest and deportation of her parents to Siberia following their involvement in the struggle for Poland's freedom. The novel opens in the Eastern half of the country with the execution of her two brothers during that year of European revolutions of 1848. With the deportation of her parents two years later - and...

This is the personal story of the author's early childhood and that of her family leading up to and following the Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland in September 1939, a political move made in conjunction with the simultaneous Nazi invasion of the country from the West. Eastern Poland (as the boundaries then existed) had a high proportion of Ukrainians and there had long been tension between the two races. After the Soviet occupation discriminatory laws were passed against the Poles that even made it permissible for their murder, to torch their houses, and destroy their businesses. Polish...