A story from contemporary Germany set in Wittenhagen, Brandenburg: Hedwig Leydenfrost lives with her brother Leonhardt, a retired librarian, in the village of her childhood. The family plans to celebrate Hedwig's ninetieth birthday next summer and to combine the celebration with a fundraising campaign for refugees. It is the year when the Chancellor says, "We can do this." The months pass, winter arrives, and it becomes bitterly cold in the Mark Brandenburg province. After ice and snow, the sloe and apple blossoms follow. The seasons change, and the grand celebration for Hedwig Leydenfrost draws ever closer. Perhaps the last spring, the last summer after a long life... For the first time in over thirty years, following his highly acclaimed autobiographical and cultural-historical books about Brandenburg and Prussia, Günter de Bruyn tells another story from contemporary Germany.