To thirteen-year old Chris, orphaned in East Germany during World War II, the thought that he was going to live in the United States was almost unbelievable. Brought up in a quiet mountain village by a wise old woman who had taught his mother, he had led a simple life, simple until his activities with a group of freedom fighters made it imperative that he cross the border to West Germany and safety.

And then America, with its bewildering variety and great abundance of everything! Sturdy and independent though he was, Chris was confused by many things in the new world and longed for the day when he could live as an adopted son with Larry, an ex-GI who has befriended him as a child in Germany.

By this time Larry and Denise, his French wife, had already adopted a small Italian girl and a Korean boy who were proving too much for Denise, since she had a baby of her own. So Chris spent his first winter in Chicago, boarding with a family who ran a restaurant where he washed dishes to earn his keep. Not until late summer, when Larry's "international" family moved to a ranch near Santa Barbara, could Chris join them and feel that at long last he had "come home."