In 1929, Max and Gertrud Bondy opened the doors to Marienau, a progressive boarding school in rural Germany. After fleeing the Nazis in 1939, their daughter Annemarie and her husband George founded The Roeper School, still thriving today. These are Annemarie's intimate memories of her childhood at Marienau. They render a portrait of the milieu that would birth the Bondy/ Roeper family's humanitarian philosophy-one that would evolve to profoundly impact the history of gifted education.

This provocative look at the universal challenges of aging provides a unique view of what it is like to be "beyond old." Annemarie's honesty, as she steps to the edge of existence and embraces the mystery of what it means to be human, gives us all the courage to look at our own lives in a more hopeful, compassionate way.