Paris, Fall 1942. Ten-year-old Fanny escapes in the midst of WWII from a Jewish orphanage supervised by the Nazis. She arrives at the door of a French woman and asks for her help. The woman, whose real identity is revealed only towards the end of the book, agrees to take her in, and Fanny becomes Annie Normand. Changing her name and identity is the first in a series of events, some brutal, that the child will encounter over the next four years in Vichy France. This is the story of a double journey: the actual journey of Fanny-Annie, a Holocaust survivor, to the places in Poland where her parents and siblings were murdered, and an inner journey in which her childhood as the pampered youngest daughter of a loving Jewish family was shattered by the German occupation of Brussels. The journeys proceed side by side and become intermingled, enabling Annie to come to terms with the past. Annie writes her recollections as she lived them: courageously and optimistically. Despite her suffering, she never lost her compassion. Her bravery and struggle to survive in a world gone mad are described with gentleness, irony and humor.