Jerusza kidnaps two-year-old Inge from her Berlin home and carries her deep into the forests of Eastern Poland.

Jerusza renames the kidnapped girl Yona and spends years raising her alone in the forest, teaching her survival, healing, and killing.

Yona meets a boy named Marcin on the forest's edge and learns about Hitler's rise to power and violence in Berlin.

Jerusza dies and reveals she kidnapped Yona from her German parents, then scornfully refuses to say she loves Yona.

Yona finds a feverish girl named Chana collapsed in the forest and learns about Nazi persecution of Jewish people.

Chana's mother refuses Yona's warning to flee, and Yona later finds the entire family shot dead by German soldiers.

Yona meets a man named Aleksander struggling to fish and agrees to help his group of Jewish refugees survive the winter forest.

Yona kills two Russian soldiers who are about to shoot a boy named Leib from the refugee group.

The refugee group builds underground winter shelters called zemliankas, and Aleksander and Yona begin a romantic relationship.

Yona encounters a starving second refugee group led by a man named Zus and invites them to join the camp.

Yona discovers Aleksander having sex with a woman named Sulia and permanently leaves the refugee group.

While watching an execution in a Polish village square, Yona recognizes one of the German officers as her father, Siegfried Juttner.

Juttner offers to spare the condemned nuns if Yona reveals the Bielski group's hiding place; she refuses and plans to escape.

Yona finds the nuns shot dead inside the church and escapes through a hidden tunnel back into the forest.

Yona throws herself in front of Juttner's gun to save Zus, is shot, then kills her father with her concealed knife.

A mysterious woman named Jerusza kidnaps a two-year-old girl named Inge from Berlin and raises her deep in the forests of Eastern Poland under the name Yona. After Jerusza dies and leaves Yona alone, Yona encounters Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution and commits herself to helping them survive. She falls in love with a man named Aleksander, then meets a second group leader named Zus, and is eventually betrayed by Aleksander's infidelity. Venturing into a Polish village, Yona makes a shocking discovery: a German officer overseeing executions is her biological father, Siegfried Juttner. She refuses his demands to betray the refugees and escapes back into the forest to warn them. In the novel's climax, Juttner tracks her down and threatens to kill Zus, and Yona throws herself in front of the bullet before killing her father, fully choosing her forest family over her blood one.

The headline story of Yona's life, from kidnapping to self-sacrifice.

Jerusza takes young Yona to a village to steal supplies, where Yona sees a family celebrating Hanukkah through a window.

After learning Yona secretly met Marcin twice, Jerusza moves them deeper into the forest to prevent further contact.

Bombs fall over Poland, and Yona and Jerusza wade neck-deep through a swamp to reach safety on a hidden island.

After Jerusza's death, Yona performs Jewish mourning rituals and sits shiva alone in the forest for seven days.

Yona helps the feverish Chana find her hiding parents and tends to Chana's wounded father Isaac in their forest lean-to.

Aleksander tells Yona that a grateful farmer gave him a gun to repay a debt the farmer owed to Aleksander's father.

Yona teaches Aleksander's refugee group to conceal their tracks and helps them build shelters in a safer camp location.

Yona carves a wooden menorah so the refugee group can celebrate Hanukkah together in the forest.

Aleksander furiously accuses Yona of endangering everyone by bringing Zus's unfamiliar group back to their camp.

Sulia tells Yona she is an outsider who acts like a man and vows to protect Aleksander from her.

Aleksander refuses Yona's premonition that the group must immediately move camp, while Zus defends her survival instincts.

Zus's brother Chaim reveals to Yona that Nazis tied Zus to a chair and forced him to watch his wife and child be shot.

A woman in the refugee group gives birth on the swamp island during the group's desperate flight from German soldiers.

Zus emerges from the forest and tells Yona that Aleksander was killed on his mission, then kisses her for the first time.

After the war ends, the refugee group scatters to rebuild their lives while Yona remains in the Nalibocka forest with Zus until age 100.

Before the war reaches the forest, Jerusza gives Yona her first glimpse of the outside world by taking her to a village, and later moves them deeper into the wilderness after Yona secretly befriends a local boy. When bombs begin to fall over Poland, the two women retreat through a swamp to survive, and after Jerusza's death, Yona honors her with a week of Jewish mourning rites. Joining Aleksander's refugee group, Yona teaches them how to conceal their tracks, build shelters, and carve out a life in the wilderness, even crafting a menorah so they can celebrate Hanukkah. Tension builds as Aleksander's jealousy clashes with a newcomer named Sulia, who resents Yona's authority, while Zus quietly proves himself a more trustworthy ally. When the Germans sweep through the region, the group escapes through a swamp, a baby is born in the wilderness, and Zus returns from a dangerous mission bearing news of loss and new hope, before the survivors ultimately scatter at the war's end.

The supporting moments that shaped Yona's world and the refugees she protected.

Jerusza begins questioning whether she was right to kidnap Yona as the girl grows curious about religion and the outside world.

Yona presses Jerusza about her origins and identity as distant explosions signal that war has reached Poland.

Yona tells the dying Jerusza she loves her; Jerusza replies scornfully that love is only for fools.

Chana tells the newly isolated Yona about the Nazi plan to exterminate all Jewish people across Europe.

Aleksander repeatedly asks Yona who she is during their first meeting, and she realizes she cannot answer him.

Yona decides that helping Aleksander's doomed refugee group survive the winter matters more than her solitary forest life.

Aleksander begs Yona to stay with the group permanently, revealing how essential she has become to their survival.

Yona wakes from an ominous dream of ravens and discovers that Aleksander has abandoned his patrol that night.

As Yona walks away from the camp, Zus asks her to stay, and she recognizes he has a different kind of heart.

A German officer notices Yona's mismatched eyes on the road into the village and draws another officer's attention to her.

Juttner locks Yona in a bedroom after she challenges his claim that following orders justifies killing innocent people.

Juttner warns Yona that German forces will soon sweep the forests and kill all the Jewish refugees hiding there.

Yona confesses to Zus that her father is a high-ranking Nazi officer; Zus tells her only who she is now matters.

Before the convoy ambush, each group member calls out the names of their murdered family members and loved ones.

Juttner tracks Yona to the forest and reveals that her mother was part Jewish before aiming his gun at Zus.

From the moment Jerusza begins doubting her own kidnapping decision to Yona's dying confession of love that Jerusza coldly rejects, the novel is built on pivotal shifts in self-understanding. Yona's isolation is shattered when Chana names the full horror of the Nazi extermination plan, and she is forced to confront the question of her own identity when Aleksander simply asks who she is and she cannot answer. She chooses to give up her solitary life for the refugees, navigates betrayal and heartbreak, and finds in Zus someone who truly sees her worth. Her journey into the Polish village exposes her to atrocities firsthand and brings the most shocking revelation of all: her Nazi father is the enemy. In the novel's final turning point, Juttner tracks Yona into the forest, and his revelation that her mother was part Jewish reframes Jerusza's long-ago kidnapping as an act of salvation, completing Yona's understanding of her own identity and destiny.

The key decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that defined Yona's journey.