On the eve of World War II, a young American girl went to Ruthenia in the heart of central Europe hoping to get married and return with her husband to New Jersey. But cataclysmic events intervened and, although she never gave up her American citizenship, it was sixty years before she returned home. This is her dramatic story. It describes daily life for a family struggling to survive in a region taken over by the Soviet Union and suddenly subjected to nationalization, collectivization, religious persecution, re-education, and political terror.