"One quiet day when her mother was away from home, Carmen Bugan's father put on his best suit and drove into Bucharest to stage a one-man protest against Ceausescu. He had been typing pamphlets on an illegal typewriter and burying it in the garden each morning under his daughter's bedroom window. This is the story of what happened to Carmen and her family, isolated and under surveillance in their beloved village home."--Cover.

With her father in prison and her family under surveillance in their beloved village home, surrounded by microphones and informed on by the neighbours, Carmen was abruptly forced to leave her childhood behind. Six years later, under threat of death, the family was expelled from Romania. She didn't expect ever to return.