Gretel Fernsby is a quiet woman leading a quiet life. She doesn't talk about her escape from Germany seventy years ago or the dark post-war years in France with her mother. Most of all, she doesn't talk about her father, the commandant of one of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps.

But when a young family moves into the apartment below her, Gretel can't help but befriend their little boy, Henry, though his presence brings back painful memories. One night, she witnesses a violent argum...

Ambitious, far-reaching and mythic, it introduces a group of characters whose lives we will come to know and will follow through time and space until they reach their natural conclusion.