This is the first biography to concentrate exclusively on Woolf's close and inspirational friendships with the key women in her life, including the caregivers of her Victorian childhood who instilled in her a lifelong struggle between creativity and convention: her taciturn sister, Vanessa Bell; enigmatic artist Dora Carrington; complex writer Katherine Mansfield; independent novelist Vita Sackville-West; and riotous, militant composer Ethel Smyth.

My name is Inge. I am sixteen.

I live with Mama and Papa in Munich. Food is still rationed, though the war ended over ten years ago.

My boyfriend is Jewish. I have to hide this from my parents.

Sometimes I think they are hiding something from me, too. Letters arrive every year on my birthday, but they are not addressed to me.

They are for a girl named Kasia.

This is her story.

My name is Hanna. I am 15. I am Latvian. I live with my mother and grandmother. My father is missing, taken by the Russians. I have a boyfriend and I'm training to be a dancer. But none of that is important any more. Because the Nazis have arrived, and I am a Jew. And as far as they are concerned, that is all that matters. This is my story.