For almost forty years after the end of the war Dora struggled to put the past behind her and placed all her energies into building a new life, a family and a career. But the birth of her first grandchild, Miriam, reawakened in her the memories that had laid barely beneath the surface. Dora began to realize that unless she told her story, the new generation, born in America, would grow up not knowing anything about their past, their ancestors, the traditions they followed in a small town in Northern Transylvania, the destruction brought by the Holocaust, and the oppressive life in post-war communist Romania.
Dora began to write letters to Miriam whenever something in the present evoked images from the past. Each letter is a vignette, a story about people she has known, family members who have disappeared, events she has witnessed and places she has been. What emerged after a few years was the chronicle of a Jewish family against the backdrop of the main historical events of 20th century Europe.
