As I may have noted in an earlier post, the book covers most of last century and stretches itself across four countries. It begins just after the first Russian revolution and continues on though World War I, the Russian Revolution and World War II. Latvia is not a very big country, only 64,589 km², and the fact that all the above-mentioned conflicts spread themselves on to Latvian soil is a sobering thought. Of course, Latvia was not alone in this respect, but this story is about a Latvian woman and, therefore, focusses mainly on Latvia's situation.