Författare: Andrei Rogers

The authors parents were part of the massive emigration of White Russians who left their country at the very end of the Civil War that engulfed Russia after the Communist Revolution of 1917. They first lived in Harbin, then moved to Shanghai, where the author, who was born in1937, grew up. Shanghai was under Japanese occupation during World War II and in March 1949 was surrounded by Mao Tse Tungs communist troops, prompting a departure for San Francisco on the ocean liner S.S. Cleveland of the American President Lines in 1950, beginning the familys odyssey in the United States.