April 1945: The 27-year-old Elsa Lewinsky is alone in her parents' bourgeois apartment in Berlin's West End, waiting for the end of the war. The Russian invasion is imminent, but the future is uncertain. Elsa is a lone fighter who, despite the horrors around her, looks forward with courage and hope. In a laconic style and with sharp observational skills, Weber describes the everyday experiences of hunger, fear, rape, and encounters with the Allies in defeated Berlin. She crafts a precisely drawn psychogram of various types and characters without passing judgment.