Stefania Podgórska lives in Przemyśl, Poland, during the winter of 1942. Someone knocks on her apartment door at night, and Stefania is scared it’s the Gestapo—the Nazi secret police. The knocking grows louder and wakes Stefania’s six-year-old sister, Helena. Stefania wonders if the Nazis will shoot her and her sister as they did another Jewish man, Mr. Schwarzer. The person knocking whispers Stefania’s nickname, Fusia, and Stefania runs to the door. She thinks she knows who it is, but it’s not who she thought—it’s Max.

Stefania goes back in time six years to her childhood in Bircza. She’s 11 and lives on a farm with eight siblings. She goes to school and eats well, but she hates the country and wants to live in a big city. She goes with her mom—her dad died—to visit her two big sisters, Angia and Marysia, who work in Przemyśl. They eat and drink tea in the sisters’ apartment, and Stefania eagerly looks out the window and watches the big city excitement. Two years later, Stefania’s mom agrees to let her stay in Przemyśl, where she’ll sleep on a cot in her sister’s apartment and work for Mrs. Diamant in her shop.