TV moderator Tom Mondearath of Cologne is worried about his eighty -four -year -old mother Greta, who is increasingly forgetting. When a diagnosis of dementia comes, Tom is horrified. Before his mother's illness becomes a gift. For the first time in life, Greta tells of himself, about his childhood in Preussisch Eylau with beloved grandparents, about escape from Russian soldiers in the ice winter, about meeting American soldier Robert Cooper in Heidelberg. Is this all the key to understanding Greta's sadness that Tom's childhood overshadowed?

When Tom encounters letters and photographs from the time of World War II, he gets on an incredible secret. Who is the little girl in the picture that Greta protects as a treasure? Tom gradually recognizes that his life happiness is also related to his mother's past…

The novel debut Susanne Abel tells the moving and authentic story of children from the time of the occupation we haven't read yet.