"She wanted to have her ashes thrown into the Bois Boulogne, by the Lake, where she and her young companion, Pierre, used to sit in the sun "that last summer. They had walked there each week, he tall, still young, and she gazing at him with the amorous eyes she had always reserved for handsome men. That's what I had to do—wait for a sunny day and throw her ashes by the lake."

This is the story of Jacqueline, nee Hottinger, one of the most glamorous women in Europe, pre-World War II, a gorgeous, red-haired, temperamental Parisian music hall star who married Kurt Laurentius, from a prominent Berlin family dominant in the German silk trade, an industry that, due to the use of silk in parachutes, would become tied to the world-wide ambitions of Adolph Hitler.

This is the story of their life together, Jacqueline, a woman of intense will and hauteur, and Kurt, handsome, hard-working and very anti-Nazi, whose life and health will be destroyed by the war—and Jacqueline's determination to save the life of their only child, Christiane, an ugly duckling daughter who would one day inherit Jacqueline's will, looks, and indominable sense of style. This is a story of intense mother-daughter bonding, during the worst of times. It is a harrowing story of sheer survival against all odds, with an amazing, intense love in the middle of it. To the list of glamorous women during the World War II period that included Wallis Warfield Simpson, Rita Hayworth, and Marlene Dietrich, must be added the name of Jacqueline Laurentius, in this compelling story of love and survival in the hellfire of World War II, as candidly told by their daughter, Christiane Germain.