Barbara Ruth Bluman chronicles her mother's dramatic journey from Nazi-occupied Poland to western British Columbia, where her legacy lives on. Bluman sets an urgent and intimate tone as she follows Zosia Hoffenberg from her genteel upbringing in Warsaw through the shock of the Blitzkrieg and on to her escape from Europe through the Soviet Union and Japan. That escape required the help of Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul in Lithuania, who defied his superiors and helped several thousand Jews to flee. Bluman also reveals how, even as she was recording her mother's tale of survival, cancer was ravaging her own body. In this interwoven narrative, Bluman explains how she garnered strength from her mother's account as a refugee, as she "stared death in the face". These twin narratives blossom out of salvaged journal entries and letters, and from the photographs of family members who have reunited after years of displacement. A celebration of the universal struggle for survival, this book offers a hopeful response to one of history's darkest times.