Fourteen-year-old Peter is sent west to America to escape the growing horror of Nazi Germany. But his younger brother, Arie, and their entire family are sent east to the death camps. Only Arie survives. The brothers reunite in the nascent Jewish state, where Arie becomes a businessman and one of the richest men in Israel, while Peter becomes a top Mossad agent heading some of Israel’s most vital espionage operations. But they also fall in love with the same woman, Tamara, a lonely Jewish refugee from Cairo. And over the next two decades, as their new homeland faces extraordinary obstacles that could destroy it, the brothers’ intrigues and jealousies threaten to tear their new lives apart.

As World War II winds to a close, Europe's roads are clogged with 20 million exhausted refugees walking home. Among them are Jacob and Sarah, lonely Holocaust survivors who meet in Heidelberg. But Jacob is consumed with hatred and cannot rest until he has killed his brother’s murderer, a concentration camp guard nicknamed "The Rat." Now he must choose between revenge and love, between avenging the past and building a future.