This unforgettable book opens with the death of Abeles' mother in Long Island when he was 68, which prompts him to reflect on his Viennese childhood in the 1930s. His mother was strict and possessive, and his father was unyielding. The father owned a thriving wholesale shoe business, and the family had servants and tutors. Abeles relives the Anschluss of March 12, 1938, when the Nazis took control of Austria, and he remembers mobs of Nazi sympathizers destroying synagogues and Jewish-owned properties during Kristallnacht in November of that year. In November 1939, the family sailed from Rotterdam to New York with only USD10 left from their fortune. They went to Chicago, where two sponsoring families met them.