Lisa Frei and her family lived in the small village of Ismaning just outside Munich before and during the second world war. Through her painstaking research, family interviews and personal recollections, she narrates the events that took her brothers, Toni and Shorsh, to war. Conscripted to the German army; one went to Russia, while the other went to the Arctic with the Mountaineers Company. This fascinating account mingles personal stories, tragic accounts and every day family lives, against the backdrop of the most turbulent times in European history.