In this interesting and well written book Renate talks to you, the reader, as to a close friend. She prepares the grounds for you with short overviews of the political economical and social fabrics; to familiarize you with the way people lived in the prevailing points in time, place and history. She takes you with her through a life that is forever changing: through moments you can identify with, and others that will open for you chapters you may have never encountered.

The book starts with events that shaped much of the twentieth century. It tells of the budding Jewish life in the historical Land of Israel, in a period when Nazi Germany was doing its best to destroy all Jewish life in Europe.

It's Germany, 1933. Renate is two years old when a personal attack on her father in Nazi newspaper makes the family leave Germany to the then British mandate of Palestine. Here Renate relates to you, in short, her family history, to highlight the differences between the life just left to that which is beginning:

1933 Palestine is a forgotten corner of the world: hot, dry and desolated - desert and swamps, malaria and trachoma - A land in waiting for those who yearn to reclaim her.

Starting life in a converted wooden crate in a pioneering settlement where water is available for only two hours a day, Renate develops hand in hand with the re-establishment and development of Jewish life on the land, through to the formation of the State of Israel. It covers city as well as kibbutz life, the struggle against the British mandate and the war of Independence and beyond, till 1956.

Economic necessity moves the newly wed Renate and her husband Gerry to Sydney, Australia in1956. Even though Australia of the 1950s is one of the most affluent countries in the world, an immigrant life is not easy, and the battle for survival brings about the eventual establishment of a small hospital, with relentless work and the help and generosity of the Australian people.

The want to progress finds the couple with their two children in mid-west USA during the 1963 to 1967 years that were marked by political turmoil: the Kennedy assassination, Martin Luther King march, the Vietnam War and the flower people. However, Davenport, Iowa is a place of learning, excitement and hard work; and the life of a foreign student's family in the unknown deep winters of the Mississippi Valley brings about funny situations.

Perth, Western Australia becomes home in 1967. Here life is laced with a great variety of occurrences: from the building of clinics to the building of a large sailing boat, to that which happens in a courtroom, and to family life in general. The healing aspect is portrayed from the healer's side and point of view for a change; and a year's interlude in Israel links you back to Israel's history at the time of the Yom Kippur war.

Renate closes her story in 1988 when she and Gerry leave Western Australian to continue life on the Pacific side of Australia.

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