, the novel begins in January 1943, when Rosie’s husband Moritz, a member of the French Resistance, is hauled away by the Gestapo in Marseilles. Rosie is left alone and seven months pregnant with their two sons, Erwin (the author, Yitzchak Mayer) and Jackie. Unable to locate her husband, who later will die in Auschwitz, Rosie decides to escape from Nazi-occupied France to Switzerland. They board a train to Saint-Claude, on the Swiss border, carrying false French documents and, in Rosie’s bag, diamonds embedded in a bar of laundry soap. After an exhausting trek through the snow, the three sneak across the border into Switzerland, but their difficulties are not over.