Summary

Lizzie and her brother Karli, who was eight years younger than her, lived with their mother and father, whom they called Mutti and Papi, in a village in Germany in the 1930s. Karli was born with one leg shorter than the other and had asthma, so he was physically weak, but loved attention and was very outgoing. Mutti worked at a zoo and cared for the elephants, one of which she named Marlene after a famous singer at the time, Marlene Deitrich.

The elderly Lizzie becae confused and started the story again. She was born in 1929 in Dresden, Germany. Her father worked in an art gallery restoring paintings. The family enjoyed living in the beautiful city, and often took ‘musical picnics’ together, where they would eat and listen to songs from a gramophone in the park. They...