Ruth Klein was born in Berlin, Germany and arrived in America as a three-year-old with her parents and older sister. She grew up in Southern California and later moved to Berkeley and the San Francisco Bay Area. Since early childhood, her training in classical music has been the focal point of her life. Growing up surrounded by the history of the Holocaust, she and her sister developed a keen understanding of the impact of the Holocaust on the world—an understanding that led her to write this memoir. Klein taught piano in Houston, Texas, for twenty-three years. Her other interests include the fine arts, literature, and foreign languages. She still lives in Houston with her husband, a biomedical scientist.