The Schaffhausen author Ruth Blum (1913-1975) reflects on her everyday life during World War II in this autobiographical novel, recalling the threatened existence at the border marked by gray stones around the canton of Schaffhausen. She leaves behind a unique historical testimony of a self-determined young woman who seeks and finds her path in difficult times. In the novel published in 1971, Ruth Blum describes her youth in the wine-growing village of Wilchingen near the German border: her early enthusiasm for literature, writing, and nature, her training at the teacher training college in Schaffhausen, and the worries of her fatherless family during the economically challenging years of the interwar period. After interrupting her education, she lives in Zurich, where she receives her first journalistic assignments and later publishes her successful debut.