Saskia, a formerly very fortunate woman loses everything as she finds herself trapped by a civil war in her adopted country. She survives as her fortress of a house is heavily bombed, and having no means of support but her ingenuity, she keeps notes on her experiences, on surviving on a shoe string - brilliant recipes using wild foods, on dealing with treachery and social terrorism, on health, beauty and philosophy - She amuses herself by translating all this from English to French, with the hope that she can pass so much of what she has learned to a niece growing up obliviously in a country at peace.