Publisher's Synopsis
Against the backdrop of Hummelshof, the author's family estate in today's Estonia, the author describes how a large, working estate was managed and the grand but formal lifestyle that was typical of that time and place. But intertwined in her description of elegant country house festivities, she also writes of her childhood at Hummelshof in an atmosphere of strict, Prussian discipline maintained by her mother's cold, imperial attitude toward the children. Suffering thus from a feeling of rejection and loneliness, the author develops a love of nature and a deep spirituality-"her voices"-which sustain her on many occasions during later years of war and deprivation. The remainder of her memoir is a saga of extraordinary times - World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and World War II - during which she repeatedly finds her and her family's survival in jeopardy, and culminating in the murder of her then former husband and much of his family by the Soviets. Finally, it is in their flight from the Soviets that she leads her elderly parents and young daughter through the burning ruins of Berlin in the last days of Nazi Germany.
