Pam Jenoff takes read­ers to the Paris of 1919. Still recov­er­ing from the Great War, world lead­ers have gath­ered at a peace con­fer­ence. Young Mar­got Rosen­thal accom­pa­nies her absent-mind­ed father, a Ger­man diplo­mat, to the con­clave. She is bored, frus­trat­ed by the strange, crowd­ed city, but deter­mined to enjoy a bit of free­dom before return­ing to Ger­many to mar­ry her wound­ed fiancé, Ste­fan. She feels that she hard­ly knows him any­more. Seek­ing a bit of adven­ture, she meets Krysia Smok, a Pol­ish woman who is a gift­ed musi­cian and a rad­i­cal with a secret. She also dis­cov­ers Georg, a Ger­man naval offi­cer who makes her ques­tion her choic­es and loy­al­ties. Mar­got finds her­self involved in a dan­ger­ous polit­i­cal game. The free­dom that she want­ed has sud­den­ly turned into a series of har­row­ing alter­na­tives. His­tor­i­cal romance read­ers will enjoy the sto­ry set dur­ing a major his­tor­i­cal event, filled with intrigue, and mix­ing the casu­al­ties of war with those of the heart.