A warm and loving remembrance of a time and place far different from the modern experience, the stories told here still have universal appeal because of the zest for life and the love of people that permeates the retelling.
Partly this is an autobiography full of mischief and anecdotes, retold through the memory of a full life. The large family, the many visitors, the skilled workers, teamsters, foresters, distillers, dairymen and gardeners, the clergy and military men, and field hands on the great landed estate all come together to form a collage of rich human interactions. But the story is also of a time and a place, now passed forever, and so stands as a historical memoir that allows us to glimpse another time and another life.
Central to the story is the landed estate, Massalany, administered over generations by the aristocratic Bisping family for the benefit of all the people dependent on this regional economic focus. Located between Germany and Russia, and in the crosshairs of both, the region was historically beset from all directions.
The time of the story is a golden window of home, peace, and prosperity, the time between the two World Wars, under the threatening shadows of Hitler's Third Reich and Lenin's Revolution, the stage is set for sweeping change, revision so complete and dramatic as to throw life on the Estate into bright relief, as a treasured object. Through the eyes of one who lived the time and traveled extensively throughout Europe, we can begin to understand how that world, gone forever, has shaped our own world as well.
Along the way, we get to meet and live with extraordinary family, a heroic family, ultimately, a family of that Polish nobility that Nazis and Bolsheviks set out to destroy.
