When Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland in 1939, their victims included a five-year-old named Basia. Her father and brother were murdered in the Katyn Forest massacres, and the women and children were loaded into a cattle car for a horrific three-week journey to the steppes of Kazakhstan, there to survive as best they could. Over the next eight years, Basia would escape through Persia, Lebanon, and Egypt to safe haven in England.
Meanwhile, Daniel Ford grew up in a United States mired by the Great Depression. Europe's agony was America's windfall! He went from hardscrabble poverty to a fellowship that took him to the English university where Basia was also a student. This is the story of their meeting, their travels, and their parting. "An extraordinary book, highly original, gripping, at once full of joy and of sorrow" (Cosmopolitan Review).