The Russian revolution in 1917 and ensuing civil war caused a massive exodus of upper class, intelligentsia, and military families from Russia. The author's parents were part of that exodus, having stayed on until the very end of the Russian Civil War during which the author's father, Major General Paul Petroff, played an important role in the struggle against the Bolsheviks.
They lived in northern China, Shanghai, Japan, and, after years of wandering, arrived in California where they became U.S. citizens and part of the American establishment. As you leaf through the memoir, you will find that the family witnessed the War of the Chinese Warlords, the militarization of Japan where the author's father had a law suit against the government for the recovery of gold bullion deposited by him for safekeeping with the Japanese Military Mission in 1920, the air raids over Tokyo, post-war American politics, the Cold War, the difficult years of the Vietnam War debate, and the Iraq War.
Carefully documented from family archival materials, the memoir is a richly woven account of an odyssey that spanned eighty-five years of the author's life, from Harbin, China to the San Francisco Bay Area in California.