Fifteen-year-old Rutka awakes in a barn to silence. There are no attack dogs barking, no guards shouting. After weeks of evading the Soviet Army by marching their captives around Germany, the Nazis have finally given up and evaporated into the night. Rutka embarks on a harrowing journey back to Poland that lands her at the Catholic boarding school where she'd hidden from the Gestapo until her capture. Here, among the few tattered remnants of her childhood, the tragic past begins to seep through: the assumed Christian names, the mother who risked everything to find her lost husband and the sister torn from Rutka's arms by the police. Confronted by unimaginable loss, Rutka nonetheless finds friends, joy and slowly, a whole new life in the United States.