The narrator in this marvelous collection of linked stories is a child without a country. Fleeing Hungary in 1956 with her family, Dana Weisz finds herself living first in London, England, then in a suburb of Montreal. Her parents, Gabor and Sari, indelibly marked by the Holocaust that claimed most of their relatives, invoke a kind of golden past that both enchants and terrifies their children. As Dana’s brilliant older sister, Lillian, throws herself into her studies, Dana is left to discover her own place in the new world. Much as Dana aches to belong to her milieu, the train sets and talking dolls she sees through the windows of the split-levels on her way home from school let her know that she will never quite fit in. But she shares with her mother, Sari, a gifted teacher and indomitable survivor, a capacity to call things as she sees them. At the heart of the book is the tender, complicated relationship between father and daughter, between Gabor, the storyteller, and Dana, his sometimes critical listener.