They were privileged people, cultured and German to the core, a family that had been in Germany three hundred years. But that couldn't save them from Hitler. Some met death in concentration camps; some committed suicide; others escaped only to find themselves just barely tolerated in a war-torn England. From grandmother to grandsons, this clan of emigres will struggle to come to terms with a past replete with large ancestral homes, a present filled with impoverished relatives who have fled the Nazi regime, and a dubious future elsewhere.Karl, the breadwinning father, dreams of an artist's footloose life; his brother, an art dealer, settles on London as home. Their aged mother, Elsa, yearns for the pre-Nazi Germany of her protected youth. Only Julia, Karl's fierce and clear-eyed wife, has her heart set on America as the place to raise her two sons, Benjamin and Jacob - to whom this exciting, brave new world is only an adventure-filled steamship voyage away. Read Less