Nineteen-year-old Charlotte St. Clair, better known as Charlie, has just landed in Southampton, England, with her mother in the spring of 1947. They are bound for Switzerland so that Charlie can have an abortion. Charlie’s wealthy family is embarrassed by her condition and wants to have the problem quietly eliminated.

Charlie rebels at all the things a proper young lady is supposed to do, which includes playing dumb to catch a husband. Her parents find her math wizardry slightly unnerving, and her pregnancy causes them to think of her as an utter failure. Charlie has made it her mission to find her missing cousin, Rose Fournier, who disappeared from France in 1943: “I’d been halfway down the hole my life had become, turning endlessly in the air. But now I’d grabbed a handhold […] Because no matter what my parents said, I didn’t entirely believe Rose was dead” (10-11).

On impulse, Charlie leaves her mother at their hotel in Southampton and takes a train to London, intent on finding Eve Gardiner. Eve worked at a bureau to relocate refugees in 1945, and she signed some paperwork related to Rose’s emigration. When Charlie arrives at her door, Eve is drunk.