Anna Berdahl's earliest memories of life began in 1943 when she was four years old and living at 3 Wilson Court (now demolished), a slum area off the Wellington Road and not far from Armley Gaol. Her father was away in the Armed Forces in North Africa and her mother, who was 24 at the time, struggled to bring up five children under the age of eight. Eventually, she abandoned them, thus beginning Anna's 14 years in foster care following the Second World War. In this powerful memoir for her children, Berdahl describes a life in which sadness, uncertainty and hunger were constant companions but so were stubborn determination and tenacity, all leading to the person they would one day call their mother.