In this unabridged first-person account of life in Berlin and Frankfurt in 1938-9, Mark Kistler, a Pennsylvania Dutch farmer and Dickinson College graduate, writes his widowed mother letters from Germany during his year studying abroad in the months leading up to WWII. He witnesses Kristallnacht (the night Jewish businesses and synogogues are attacked) and is in Prague on spring break when Hitler's troops enter the city. His friends from both the U.S. and Germany will soon enter war as enemies, and his experiences will mark him for the rest of his life but never diminish his love for the people or the language.