Seventeen-year-old Christine Bolz knows that there is a whole world waiting beyond her small German village. It's a world she's begun to glimpse through music, books - and through Isaac Bauerman, the cultured son of the wealthy Jewish family she works for. Yet in the fall of 1938, Germany is changing rapidly under Hitler's regime. Anti-Jewish posters appear on street corners, dissenting talk is silenced, and a new law forbids Christine from returning to her job - and from having any relationship with Isaac. In the months and years that follow, Christine will confront the Gestapo's wrath and the horrors of Dachau, desperate to protect those she loves, to survive, and finally, to speak out.