The Golds are a Jew­ish, upper-mid­dle-class fam­i­ly who have crea­ture com­forts, social sta­tus, and polit­i­cal con­nec­tions in Poland just before World War II. They have two daugh­ters and a baby son. How­ev­er, as the years pass and the Nazis gain strength, Leib, the father, rec­og­nizes the dan­ger to his fam­i­ly. He con­tacts his cousin in Pales­tine and begins a plan to join him there. He is ready to leave when he receives a let­ter that tells him “…this is not the right time to join us. It is too dan­ger­ous.” Faced with “…the dis­in­te­gra­tion of his dream…” Leib tries to keep his fam­i­ly safe in Pinc­zow. But in 1939, the Ger­mans invade Poland, and life is changed forever. 

The rest of the book is an episod­ic nar­ra­tive of how the fam­i­ly tries to sur­vive. Ini­tial­ly, Leib sends his wife and chil­dren to a farmer who he thinks will hide them. The fam­i­ly hopes to reunite, and it is this hope that keeps them alive when the sit­u­a­tion becomes desperate. 

Each per­son or fam­i­ly who sub­se­quent­ly hides the Golds is faced with the same dilem­ma —how long can they keep them with­out dis­cov­ery? Some who help are cor­rupt and want only mon­ey before they imme­di­ate­ly turn the Golds over to the Nazis. One Pol­ish woman who hides them tem­porar­i­ly says to David, the son, ​“I feel sor­ry for you Jews. We have no choice you know. It’s the way it must be. All you Jews must die.”

At one point, hid­den but starv­ing, the moth­er sends her daugh­ter Shoshanah out with their remain­ing mon­ey to buy four cyanide cap­sules. ​“We need to escape to God on our own terms,” she says. The phar­ma­cist tells Shoshanah, ​“The Red Army is close…if you just have hope you will sur­vive.” The young girl returns with­out the poison.

Amaz­ing­ly, through their grit, deter­mi­na­tion, inge­nu­ity, and mutu­al sup­port, all of the Golds but Leib sur­vive. The final chap­ter is nar­rat­ed by David, who returns years lat­er with his grand­son to their place of hiding.

This pow­er­ful book is pre­sent­ed like a mys­tery. The read­er eager­ly reads page after page in order to dis­cov­er what will hap­pen to the des­per­ate char­ac­ters. Writ­ten in sim­ple but graph­ic lan­guage, this book is rec­om­mend­ed for ages 14 and up.