In 1944, as Budapest?s Jews begin to suffer under German occupation, eleven-year-old Zsuzsi (Susie) takes to her diary to write about her friends and family as she copes with what it means to be persecuted. Precocious and charming, Susie records the mundane along with the poignant as she describes her daily life in Budapest against the backdrop of the war. Her pre-teen life is marred by farewells ? first to her father, as he is drafted into the forced labour service, and then to her mother when Hungarian fascist collaborators take her away. Alone after the war, Susie makes a fateful decision to leave her relatives and embark on a journey to a new country, where she struggles to adapt and begins to yearn for her home in Hungary. Uncertain whether she made the right decision to emigrate, Susie writes all her feelings down in a new diary, the only place where she feels she truly belongs.