The details of Helen's pre-Australia life are the stuff of epics: orphaned at 6;
abandoned at age 9 by an indifferent uncle; forced to live for years on the streets of her small Polish town (now part of the Ukraine); shipped at 16 to a Russian
gulag to work as a slave laborer after Stalin and Hitler divvy up Poland; twice compelled to trek endless miles through Russian territory, ending up first in Uzbekistan and then in Persia; displaced to a refugee camp in Rhodesia, where she becomes pregnant — by an Italian soldier — with Sophia; finally arriving in Australia, where she's forced to temporarily place her daughrer in an orphanage.