"I buried the past in a shallow, unmarked grave but it does not rest in peace." In Hannah Zimmer's world, the past equals Germany. Defying her mother, she leaves her New Jersey home for Mainz in the autumn of 1972 to study. But a master's degree is just a smokescreen. In reality, she is on a mission to save her Jewish mother, and herself, from self-destruction. Hannah's first priority: contacting Great Uncle Ezra in Frankfurt. He is her secret weapon for battering down the wall of silence obscuring events that occurred before her family emigrated to the United States in the thirties. But will he talk? Will facing the past help her mother? Or worsen the situation? That's the gamble she takes. An unexpected distraction derails her efforts: two men vie for her favor. In record time Hannah experiences both first love and the pain of broken promises before falling headlong into a new relationship. Her happiness is short lived, however, for the consequences of falling in love with the "enemy" soon propel her family to the edge of tragedy. Even thirty years after the fall of the Third Reich, aftershocks reverberate. The ghosts that haunt Hannah's dreams shake the foundations of her world and endanger her hope of reconciliation with the immutable past.