Petra Hesse was born in 1943 in what is now the Polish part of Görlitz. In 1945, she and her parents were displaced across the Neisse River. She lived in Görlitz until 1961. In this book, she recounts her childhood and early youth in her hometown in Upper Lusatia, as well as in the small holiday resort of Geising in the Ore Mountains. In a precise, poetic manner, not only is a portrait of childhood created in the interplay of light and shadow, but also a piece of early GDR history. Petra Hesse lives in Dresden, where she worked as an art teacher at a polytechnic secondary school for twelve years and continues to work today as a freelance music educator.