Random Acts begins with the invasion of Luxembourg the summer of
1914, during the first required visit Susanna Strashoffer Von
Heldorf made from the United States to visit her elderly
grandfather in Luxembourg. When the Germans moved into the country
in August, she and her grandfather lost themselves in the chaos and
headed for a remote cabin in the mountains of Northern Italy.
Though she missed her adoptive parents and their sons, she and her
grandfather and her small dog, Minnie, got along well and were
self-sufficient. Susanna, a gifted musician, dreamed of her music
and composed many works without the aide of her beloved piano. Her
grandfather, hunted for food every day and then in March of that
first year, he died of a heart attack, leaving Susanna alone in a
strange place to fend for herself.
This is the first-hand account of her experiences as she fought for
survival during the four-and-a-half years the war lasted. She
describes the freezing winter she spent with her grandfather in a
cabin high in the Alps and about burying him in a cave after his
death in the early spring of 1915. She also tells us about the time
she was "rescued" by Italian soldiers and of the next winter nearly
starving to death while living alone in a cave at the foothills of
the mountains. She recounts the nightmare of being tried for
treason after helping an injured enemy soldier and of subsequently
being beaten nearly to death by the Italian authorities.
Along with the bad, she remembers the good times when she
entertained the Italian troops with her music and was thought to be
an angel by many soldiers because she mended their bodies in the
field hospitals with such expertise, yet appeared to be a child.
The city of Verona buzzed with stories of her supernatural powers
after she performed a cesarean section on a dead woman and saved
the baby's life. The widows and mothers left behind when their
husbands went off to war loved her for keeping them fed and for
teaching them how to survive when there was little food to keep
their families from starving.
Towards the end of the war, Susanna decided that she could never
return to the home of her adoptive parents, the wealthy
VonHelldorf's of Bayland, Ohio. Too much had happened and she
wasn't the same spoiled little rich girl who had gone to Luxembourg
four years before. She believed that until the day one of the Von
Helldorf sons arrived in the field hospital where she was staying,
his leg amputated. That day her decision was challenged. She began
to renew old ties and eventually went to live with her adopted
mother's family in France and then after the war, finally returned
to the United States as the very young bride of Joseph Von
Helldorf, one of the other sons. Her adoptive father, Rolph, was
unhappy to learn that she had married his oldest son out of the
Church's sanctions and protested loudly when he heard the news, but
after an unhappy confrontation, love and understanding won out and
there was a compromise.
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