After fleeing France to escape the German invasion in 1940, Esti Freud and her 16-year old daughter Sophie both came to feel a need to keep a personal record of those tumultuous times. Thus, in a memoir written at age 79, Esti, daughter-in-law of Sigmund Freud, looked back on her life starting before the 20th century, lived on three continents and stretched through two world wars and the Holocaust. Twenty years after her mother's death, daughter Sophie turned to Esti's memoir as the scaffold for this book, expanding it through family letters, archival material and her own diary penned as a teenager. Out of these documents, Sophie Freud has created a fascinating mosaic, including letters and insights from a wide cast of characters telling the story of a famous family and of the century. Aware of the nature of retrospective memory and its self-serving aspect, the author has sought to create a work with an even-handed, multi-voiced portrayal of her mother, father, Sigmund and the rest of the Freud family. She has woven into the text more than 50 letters she inherited after Esti died, including six previously unpublished letters from Sigmund, as well as her own views and recollections of events, her own diary, thoughts and insights from other Freud family members and in-laws. The resulting mosaic will fascinate - and perhaps disturb - all readers interested in Freud and psychoanalysis, as well as relationships and family.