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The mesmerizing account of a granddaughter's search for a World War II family history hidden for sixty yearsGrowing up in Paris as the daughter of a German mother and an Irish father, Svenja O'Donnell knew little of her family's German past. All she knew was that her great-grandparents, grandmother, and mother had fled their home city of Konigsberg near the end of World War II, never to return. But everything changed when O'Donnell traveled to the city--now known as Kaliningrad, and a part of Russia--and called her grandmother. Normally stoic and inscrutable, she uncharacteristically burst into tears. "I have so much to tell you," she said. In this transporting book, award-winning journalist Svenja O'Donnell weaves research, reporting, and more than a decade of conversations into a dramatic narrative that uniquely captures the lives of ordinary Germans--particularly women--from the rise of Hitler through the war's brutal aftermath.