Raamat jutustab 1941. a. arreteeritud ja Siberisse saadetud Ann Lehtmetsa ellujäämise loo.

Ann Lehtmets was one of the few women to have lied through Stalin's Holocaust and reached the Western World.

One morning in June 1941, Russian soldiers arrested Ann Lehtmets in her home in Estonia, tore her from her husband and children and loaded her in a cattle truck, destination unknown.
She survived her sentence in Siberia, negotiatin a life where secret police, brutish foremen and hostile landladies conspired with cold, hunger and backbreaking labour to make existence difficult for all and deadly for many.
Ann Lehtmets owed her life to spirit, intelligence, guile and humour. These qualities shine through on every page of her extraordinary recollections.

Ann Lehtmets was born in southern Estonia in 1904 and educated at a girls' college. She settled with her lawyer husband in Rakvere, Estonia's third largest city. In 1941 she was arrested and transported to Siberia, where for seventeen years she was forced to live and work in appalling conditions.

Douglas Hoile was born in South Australia in 1924. He served in the RAAF as a Spitfire pilot during the second world war, and later graduated in medicine at the University of Adelaide. He married Ann Lehtmets' daughter, Tiiu, in 1953 and has worked for many years as a general practitioner involved in community service.