German by nationality, Polish by allegiance. Hanna Muller is involved with her family in the dangerous business of working for the Nazis while helping her Polish neighbors. Tadeusz Piekarz is a young engineer, a Polish prisoner forced to labor for the Germans in Hanna's father's firm. Their growing love surprises them both and brings them improbable joy in German-occupied Krakow.

Jacek Duch is an American spy, a perpetual lost soul working under deep cover in occupied Poland. During the war, he has managed to construct a life based on an intricate web of loyalties to his American "handlers," to his Polish comrades, and to the beautiful women he leaves behind.

But then the tide of war turns, and Soviet soldiers advance savagely over the same territory the Nazis have held in an iron grip. Hanna and her mother must flee for their lives, and Tadeusz must face the Soviets with his crippled father-in-law, now branded as a Nazi collaborator. Torn by events they can't control but bound by love and faith, they struggle against all odds to survive, to find each other again. And again and again, through it all, they find their lives strangely intertwined with the American spy who comes to find himself in the cause of Polish liberty only to lose himself again.