The Way it Was
Exiled at four years of age to Siberia by Soviet authorities after the occupation of Estonia during World War II, in their process of what is now called ethnic cleansing, the author finds herself in the bitter harshness of the barren and frigid region, where she and her mother, along with many others, were destined for extermination. Witness to the suffering and death of helpless women and children, including her younger brother, nearly losing her mother to encephalitis, and herself going through hunger and disease, she miraculously survives.