As ominous as the book cover and title seem to be, this inspiring true story is likely to evoke many more tears of joy than tears of sadness in readers. At its simplest, it is a story about family, a girl's search for her mother, from whom she was stolen when she was only 4 years old. Born in Erie, Pennsylvania, she is raised in Nazi Germany, so desperately lonely she naively puts sugar on the window sill each night in hopes of attracting a stork bearing a baby sister or brother.
After World War II, she dodges Russian border guard gunfire, and triumphs over one obstacle after another to find her mother, until there is only one obstacle -- the recurring drowning nightmare -- that she still must solve, in order to find lasting peace. Again, it is all a true story.
The author, a now-retired journalist with 37 years of experience as a reporter, columnist and editor, first heard the true story about 30 years ago. He conducted extensive interviews with the then-still-living main characters of the story. At one point, he resigned an editor-in-chief of an Ohio newspaper, to take a reporters job in Meadville, Pennsylvania, because that is where more than half of the real-life story, including the solution of the nightmare, unfolds.
