Lina and her father arrive at an enclave called The Sea, a staging post between migrations, with only a few possessions. In this mysterious and shape-shifting place, a building made of time, pasts and futures collide. Lina befriends her neighbors: Bento, a Jewish scholar in 17th-century Amsterdam; Blucher, a philosopher in 1930s Germany fleeing Nazi persecution; and Jupiter, a poet of Tang Dynasty China. Memory, political revolution, generational change and the ethical imagination are at the heart of Lina’s illuminating conversations with her fellows in the Sea. Through their guidance, Lina equips herself to reckon with difficult questions of guilt, responsibility and the possibility of redemption when her ailing father begins to reveal his role in their family’s tragic past.