Willibald Brinkmann, a Lutheran pastor, has more than a sneaking admiration for Hitler - something his Jewish wife Gabi is unable to share. It's 1933 when the Brownshirts tell Willibald to 'go find another twig to perch on' and he loses no time abandoning his prestigious Berlin parish. Humiliated and resentful, Willibald finds refuge in the tiny village of Heimstatt high in the Austrian Alps, where Gabi's last child - and narrator of the story - is born. Then the Nazis arrive in Austria. Gabi struggles to protect her family against the ever-tightening vice of persecution and the remorseless...

An opera singer fallen on hard times, Franziska Goldmann has become the star courtesan in 19th century Hong Kong. Through a chance encounter with the visiting Prince Alfred, the first Duke of Edinburgh, the young woman receives an opportunity that could alter her destiny.