When Nazi troops invaded her home of Donetsk, Ukraine, in 1941, Tatyana Artemyeff, a 25-year-old teacher, was left on her own to save her two children and mother when her conscripted husband''s unit retreated from the city. Luckily, Tatyana spoke German and was determined to find a way to survive the brutal occupation and keep her family from dying of starvation or execution.

Decades later, Tatyana''s daughter Helen found her diaries in a Connecticut attic, and discovered a unique account of Tatyana''s life as a teacher in the Stalinist Soviet Union, the 1941 Nazi invasion of Donetsk, her survival under Nazi occupation, and her harrowing escape to the West. This book switches seamlessly between Tatyana''s account of life and death and the story of Helen, her American-born daughter.