Although the memoir of Marion, Countess Dönhoff, takes place in East Prussia, now an exclave of Russia, her experiences shed light on what life was like on the great estates of Mecklenburg, as well. “Before the Storm” becomes a page-turner as she flees the advancing Red Army on horseback, accompanied by hundreds of thousands of others seeking refuge farther west. Despite the sad fate of her ancestral home, which was burned to the ground, her writing is free of self-pity. Instead, her goal is to leave a record of a lost way of life she deeply treasured.
