Liesel, her husband Willi and their three little girls are living in the Dutch East Indies, unaware that their lives are about to be forever changed by a conflict in their homeland which they had left many years earlier. Soon after World War ll breaks out in Europe Willi, a German, is arrested and interned by the Dutch. Overwhelmed by accounts of the German invasion of Holland, former friends in the Dutch Colony become enemies overnight. Liesel and her children are placed under detention and are eventually sent to Japan as refugees.
Liesel's struggle to sustain herself and her children is riveting, evidence that a mother's love, determination and strength can prevail. It is a story of love and loyalty which endures despite seemingly insuperable odds. It is a story of adventure and survival introducing many characters in both heartbreaking and sometimes humorous situations. Liesel's journey reveals that place deep within where heroes as well as villains can emerge in each of us during times of suffering and stress.
I Cry for Innocence
clearly shows how in wartime, it is the innocent who are forgotten and suffer the most.
"I think of myself as a child of war. How could I not? Having spent the first five years of my life dodging bombs, running to shelters in the middle of the night, or sitting for hours in a dark hall with pillows over my head wondering what the noise, the flashes of light outside and the breaking glass would do to me . . . I would look at Mama's face when all was in turmoil. It was my barometer for danger. I do not ever remember seeing her cry. In all those years, she must surely have wept many times! But I never witnessed a single tear. She knew her girls were looking at her when things were bad, and that our fragile little ship of childhood depended on a safe and steady anchor."
- Theresia M. Quigley