The author chronicles the experiences of his family in pre-war Poland, wartime Poland, the Soviet Union, Iran, Pakistan, India, Britain, and the United States. The Bak family was deported by the Soviets to Siberia in 1940. After Germany declared war on Russia in 1942, the family escaped from a labor camp and went to Uzbekistan, where Piotr Bak, the author's father, joined the Polish Army in Exile. The Army and civilian family members were evacuated to Iran in 1942. As a child, Eugene Bak spent five years in refugee camps in Iran, Pakistan and India. The family went to England in 1947 and immigrated to the United States in 1952, where Eugene Bak became president of a chemical plant in Franklin, PA.