BERLIN, 1942. An orphan boy is adopted by a childless couple. He grows up in a divided and war-weary Germany with the legacy of a hideous crime on his conscience. More than fifty years later, his American daughter, Agnes, prepares to marry her Polish-American sweetheart. But when the wedding day comes, the father of the bride fails to appear and the groom storms away with a mysterious letter. In that moment, Agnes realizes that even half a century isn’t long enough to extinguish the flames of war. Hoping to forge a peace between her father and her groom, Agnes ventures to Berlin, Munich, and ultimately Warsaw in search of answers only her father’s estranged and ailing mother, Gertrude, can provide. But as Gertrude’s health deteriorates, it becomes clear that she holds the key to a horrific secret that she is determined to take to her grave. To uncover the truth, Agnes must race against the silencing jaws of death through a tangled post-Communist bureaucracy, American embassies, Polish convents, Nazi legacies and the spectre of her own doubts. Agnes must decide how far she is willing to go, and if it’s worth destroying her father and casting shame over the final days of the woman who raised him.
