After escaping from an Eastern European concentration camp where he has spent most of his life, a twelve-year-old boy struggles to cope with an entirely strange world as he flees northward to freedom in Denmark. David lay quite still in the darkness of the camp, waiting for the signal. "You must get away tonight, " the man had told him. "Stay awake so that you're ready just before the guard is changed. When you see me strike a match, the current will be cut off and you can climb over - you'll have half a minute for it, no more." David escapes from a concentration camp and flees across Europe. He is utterly alone - who can he trust? What will await him back home? And all the while he knows that they may catch up to him.