Lipstadt's survivor parents fled Poland vowing never to return. Decades later, after her parents' deaths, she warily visits, then returns, again and again. Walking on the city streets where her parents played as children, Helena begins to comprehend the interwoven culture of Jews and Poles. She honors her family's layered history as she seeks and builds connections with the Polish people she meets.

In powerful prose and poems, Lipstadt looks at a bloodstained past with her heart's eyes. Our Dark and Radiant Land is a map to a new place of seeing, where truth and reconciliation coexist.