Armo Surminski, renowned for his great East Prussian novels, tells the story of the fate of many displaced persons in this book, focusing on those who were driven to Schleswig-Holstein by the war. After a long journey, a small boy finds his mother and sister again in a Holstein village in the winter of 1946. Now, the Marenke family lives in the chicken coop of a large farmer, cursed by the locals who see their peace disturbed by the foreign hungry souls.