Misha was 7 years old when her mother and father were taken away and she was hidden in a "safe" home her parents secretly had arranged for her. But when the child overheard her stepmother planning to turn her over to the Germans, she took off on foot to find her parents. Hiding in the forest, she survived by stealing from farm kitchens along her way and pilfering crops in the field. Often she was near starvation and many times nearly froze to death.

In the course of her travels she was befriended by wolves, and among their family she experienced the happiest moments of her troubled life. "I never remember being hungry in the company of wolves," she writes.

Through all her trials Misha continued to believe she could find her parents and so she kept walking for four years across war-ravaged Europe, witnessing first-hand the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust. Before the end of the war she would be captured by partisans, trapped in the infamous Warsaw Ghetto, forced to kill a Nazi soldier in self defense and swept up by her first love.

This inspiring story, full of passion, terror and courage is a classic in the manner of Anne Frank's Diary, with the difference that in this tale the narrator survives.