Konopka spent her entire life advocating for social justice for every person. Both her personal and professional life are highlighted enabling the reader to learn of Konopka's paradoxes as she struggled to help others while she suffered fears of inadequacy despair and tormenting nightmares. The book is a powerful testament of how one women who suffered total degradation growing up in Germany under the Nazis transformed her pain into a dynamic career of youth advocacy and social group work philosophy.

Janice Andrews-Schenk provides us with a magnificent broad look at the life and work of Gisela Konopka. With roots in the German resistance movement and the Holocaust and a wide-ranging interest in people and ideas Konopka contributed to the development of social work with groups child welfare and social activism. She teaches in the College of St. Catherine/University of St. Thomas School of Social Work.