Die Aussiedlung

András, the narrator and youngest of seven children, loves his courageous mother, Júlia, more than anything. Wherever she is, happiness seems possible, no matter what happens. For four years, she wanders the steppes of eastern Romania with her children after they are forcibly deported following the sentencing of their father, a pastor, to twenty-two years of forced labor.

Under constant surveillance by the authorities, they make homes in earthen dugouts and abandoned villages, punished simply because they belong to the same family.