The play is inspired by the biography of Simona Kossak, but the events it depicts are a product of the author's imagination. Simona Kossak was an extraordinary person. Her father, Jerzy; grandfather, Wojciech; and great-grandfather, Juliusz, were renowned Polish landscape and battle-scene painters. Simona broke with the family tradition, but chose her own, unique path. She left her native Krakow to live for over thirty years in a wooden forester's lodge in the middle of the Białowieża Forest, without running water or electricity.