All through her long busy life in America, Nora Percival felt impelled to learn about the family she’d left behind in Samara, the city on the Volga where she was born. After glasnost she was finally able to go there and find the places, though not the people, of her youth. Her search resurrected childhood memories of revolution, civil war, famine and exile, which she felt impelled to share, “to speak for so many others who have silently endured the loss of all they valued.” In her book the reader will meet the extended family who faced many trials in those chaotic years, and will be moved by their steadfast togetherness through want and woe. The reader will share the love and courage that sustained them and helped them survive hunger and despair, the humor that cheered dreary days and the strength that carried them through affliction and calamity. Readers will cry over their sorrows and enjoy their small triumphs, and they will live again in memory.