 of Wisconsin) tells a moving story to promote the reader's understanding and her own healing.As a child in Latvia, she endured the terror and dislocation of World War II at the hands of both Soviets and Germans, lived in a postwar refugee camp, and became an immigrant to the American Midwest, establishing a life there shaped by survivor's guilt and a sense of victimization.Integral to her life are family relationships, especially estrangement from her mother, stemming from the war years and the author's own unhappy marriage.