The story of the childhood and youth of Peter Heller, one of the first children to be psychoanalyzed by Anna Freud. To tell this story Vivian Heller draws on a wealth of primary sources, including her father's case history and his internment diary, using novelistic techniques to bring the past alive. While in Anna's care, Peter's native Vienna slides into Fascist barbarism and he is forced to navigate an increasingly dangerous world. He flees to England only to be deported to Canada, where he is interned as a German-speaking foreign national, a situation that put him among Jewish refugees and Nazi P.O.W.'s.