After liberation from the horrors of Buchenwald Concentration Camp, eighteen-year-old Klara Werner is given a unique opportunity to leave the past behind and forge a new life and fresh identity in the American South. Driven by her mother's final advice to "survive at any costs," she married the army doctor who treated her after the war-and sets off to enjoy unfamiliar freedoms in the the city of Atlanta, Georgia. But Covering up her past becomes increasingly burdensome, as Klara begins to realize she has more in common with her husband's Negro help than with his county club friends. In an era when Jim Crow rules seem eerily similar to the Nuremberg laws that victimized her family, Klara finds solace in standing up for civil rights. But in the end, only a difficult visit from her past will free her from her web of lies.