While they were gone Ernst had not been able to wear his artificial leg and had fallen and burned his face. He had persuaded the local hospital to take care of Willi. Mutti goes and gets Willi the day she gets home.

Oberstedten grows throughout 1946 and 1947 as a couple of hundred more refugees are settled there. Most of them are from the Sudetenland but a few are from Selesia like Mutti.

Ernst's sister brings them potatoes and vegetables from the hospital kitchen where she works. A relative in America sends them packages of clothing and food. They receive CARE packages from America, also. These include Crisco and cornmeal that Mutti is not familiar with. They spread the Crisco on bread until they learn it is for frying. Mutti tries to bake with the cornmeal like she would other flour but this is not successful. Scarce items such as coffee and cocoa are good for bartering and Ernst takes Heiner with him to Frankfurt where he trades these things on the black-market.

An Oberstedten woman hears that Mutti has coffee and comes and asks for some for her mother. Mutti gives her a small package and the woman says when the Mirabella plums are ripe she will bring some to Mutti. Later in the year Mutti sees the woman approaching the house with a basket and thinks how good it will be to get some plums. The woman asks if Mutti has any more coffee and Mutti says "not one bean". The woman turns and walks away with the basket of plums.

Things gradually get better. The 1,000-calorie per day rationing ends in 1948. Ernst finally finds work as a bookkeeper. A woman who works with Ernst sells them some bedroom furniture. She lives on the other side of the Taunus Mountains. Ernst with his one leg can not carry furniture. So Mutti gets a neighbor to help. He and Mutti take his mule and wagon across the mountain. It rains as they return with the furniture and the wagon wheels get stuck in the mud. Mutti finds out that she can get 25 marks per month in war widows child support payments but she will have to claim Marianne and Heiner as being Franz's children. Ernst doesn't want to do this but practicality wins out and Marianne and Heiner become Daniels again.

Mutti makes one of her midnight raids on farmer Wagner's field. The next day she goes to get her annual permanent. Even these are rationed. As she sits in the hair parlor some women are discussing how farmer Wagner's field had been raided the night before and that he knew who it was because he had found a billfold. Mutti has some tense moments, as she wants to look in her bag to see if she has her billfold but can't do this in front of the other women. Later when she checks she is very much relieved to find it.

Mutti and Ernst become friends of some neighbors named Weidl. The Weidls have a small orchard and use the fruit to make schnapps. However, they know the excise people are watching them so they ask Mutti and Ernst to do the distilling. Mutti must sneak the still apparatus and fruit past the landlord for fear of being reported. The still is set up in the kitchen on the stove and sink. Marianne and Heiner are outside playing in the yard and are unaware of what is going on. When the six o'clock church bell rings they know they will be called in soon. They are not called. The seven o'clock bell rings and they still are not called. When the eight o'clock bell rings they get nervous and go in. Ernst immediately lines them up and threatens them if they ever breathe a word of what they're seeing. Three bottles of schnapps are produced. Two are sold on the black-market for cash and butter. The Weidls and Landsiedels party with the third.

In 1952 the Polish government announces that all Germans must leave Poland. Lisbeth marries Cashy, becomes a Polish citizen and stays. Anna comes to Oberstedten and moves in with Mutti. Anna's arm is disfigured. While she was digging in search of Paul's body she had cut her arm on a rusty piece of fence wire and it had become badly infected.

Conditions continue to improve through the 1950's. They start to build a house in 1955 with the help of money Anna received in compensation for losing her property in Nysa. The new house is completed in 1956 and they move in.

Mutti's life now becomes just the normal difficult life of raising four children.