In the 1940s, in a world rav­aged by war, Char­lotte, an eight-year-old Bel­gian girl, dis­ap­pears from Nazi-occu­pied Liège, leav­ing behind her home and hap­py child­hood. Togeth­er with her fam­i­ly, she flees from per­se­cu­tors, expe­ri­enc­ing incred­i­ble adven­tures and hid­ing in squalid places in towns and cities. Alter, her uncle, forced to take up duties in one of the ghet­tos where Hitler ordered the con­fine­ment of Jews — includ­ing his own par­ents — must face an extreme eth­i­cal dilem­ma. Dim­itri Ami­lak­vari, a French sol­dier of Geor­gian ori­gin, lands in North Africa at the head of the leg­endary For­eign Legion, to con­front Mar­shal Rom­mel and his feared Afri­ka Korps. Domin­go López Del­ga­do, a Uruguayan sol­dier, enlists as a vol­un­teer in the Free French forces and is assigned to Bir Hakeim. Four real-life sto­ries that inter­twine to trans­port us back in time. This nov­el, based on true events, emerges from a time of xeno­pho­bia, per­se­cu­tion, war, and migra­tion. How­ev­er, it res­cues from that real­i­ty love sto­ries — between par­ents and chil­dren, between sib­lings, between lovers, between friends — imbued with a stub­born defense of life, lib­er­ty, neigh­bor, and one’s home­land: mul­ti­ple tales of affec­tion that tri­umph and endure beyond barbarism.