This historical novel is based on true events in the life of Johanna, the author's grandmother, and starts in central Germany, her birthplace. She travels through two world wars to end up in The Netherlands.
Johanna's father was an itinerant shoemaker from the eastern backwoods of Pomerania in the German Empire of 1880. Aching for a life of accomplishment and respect, Johanna resolves to escape her dad's fate of early death, the stigma of his mixed Slavic-German heritage, and the poverty that followed him. A headstrong girl, she refuses to be exploited as a housemaid for a wealthy family--the only choice for girls like her. She loses her job when the master of the house tries to rape her, and his wife walks in just in time.
With nothing to lose, she accepts a job as the concession shop operator with the railroad, assigned to travel with the construction crew across northern Germany. On her first day of work, she sets up shop (and home) in an empty passenger railcar and meets Hendrik, a Dutchman and the construction superintendent. Head over heels, they marry when Johanna becomes pregnant.
It doesn't take long before the first babies arrive--and continue arriving. Within three years, Johanna delivers five children, and the caboose becomes crowded. A railroad inspector drops in unexpectedly and bans the children from the construction site, so Johanna moves into the nearest town with the children.
While massive anti-Polish measures make life in the Empire difficult for Slavic people, Johanna hides her mixed Slavic ethnicity behind Hendrik's Dutch last name. When Germany joins Austria-Hungary in a new war--in the trenches too close to Hendrik's home country--Hendrik talks about returning home to neutral Holland. When Germany sinks American vessels, he's had enough and packs up his family in 1917 to move back home.
The couple buys a farm with their savings in Hendrik's hometown. The children grow up in peace and start families of their own. Not long after Hendrik's sudden death, the Nazis invade, less than twenty years after Johanna's arrival. It becomes Johanna's test of loyalties.
