Alexandr Davidowich Berman has made his living sewing costumes for the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad. Old, weary, and alert to anti-Semitism, he has retired. Although he has shut himself up in his tiny apartment, the curator of the Catherine Museum finds him and commissions him to repair tsarist clothing for a traveling exhibition.

One day while mending a vintage coat, Berman discovers a scrolled manuscript sewn into the lining. It is a letter written by a nameless Jew who lived in the early 1800s under Nicholas I. -I am a man of no importance. I only want my son to come back.-...