The book doesn't just follow the story of the children however. We also get a glimpse of what life is like for the father and stepmother who don't make it much further than Piaski before they run their motorcycle off the road. These two are taken in by a group of partisans in the forest who are working and waiting for the Russians to come through Poland and push back the Germans. The father called The Mechanik by the Russian leader of this partisan group is only accepted because of his engineering skills. Knowing the children weren't left to far before Piaski, the father and stepmother think only of getting through what might be left of the war, and getting back to the children.

The tale is set near the farthest end of the war in 1943, as the Russians were beginning to make their push in to Polish territory. In Piaski, there's only a few German soldiers, the rest are Polish men taken by the Germans in the war. Forced to work for them, in the small villages and towns, they let a lot of things slide. The children, taken in by Magda are given fake papers and are accepted by the villagers. When the Oberfurer (a high ranking SS officer) and a Brown Nun come to Piaski, the men of the village now that the time is coming that the children will be taken.

From there we see the last of the war, the Russians pushing back the Germans, the Americans finally coming around with tanks, and the people unsure of who to trust. So many people of varying cultures were destroyed that the people are untrusting of anyone new, even if they're of the same cuture or race. The book's just not an interesting twist to a standard fairy tale, it's a grim look at what war of that magnitude can do to people.