nine-year-old Danielle ("Dani") Loesseps escapes from Latvia under the protection of the Dutch consul. Her Jewish mother, the consul's secretary, is tragically left behind at the end of a momentous year which sees a heroic scheme to save refugees from the Nazis, the blossoming of a secret love, and an unhappy woman's revenge. The consul's young daughter Berta Vandercam also grows up in the shadow of the war and strives to understand why her father never speaks about their time in Riga. Memories of the Riga consulate and questions about what happened there haunt the survivors as they remake their lives in the postwar world.