Taking Flight

"Exchanging Glances" takes place in the German countryside in the spring of 1945, in the final days of World War II. The narrator, who occasionally interrupts the story to comment on her own memories, recalls her family's experiences as refugees forced to leave their homes—in what is now part of Poland—to make new lives in the Western part of the country.

In the first part, the young narrator and her family are in a group with other refugee families. The narrator's family includes herself, her younger brother, mother, uncle, aunt, grandmother, and grandfather. They have loaded all the possessions that they could onto a handcart, which they have to push and pull themselves. The story opens with the narrator, now an adult, remembering the moment when the SS officer (Nazi soldier) told her family that they had to leave or risk capture by...