After being expelled from Beecher Prep for his treatment of a classmate with a facial deformity, Julian has struggled to fit in at his new school. To transform his life, Julian's grandmother finally reveals her own story of courage of her youth in Nazi-occupied France, where a classmate shelters her from mortal danger.

The story of Nobel Prize winner Maria Skłodowska-Curie and her extraordinary scientific discoveries—through the prism of her marriage to husband Pierre—and the seismic and transformative effects their discovery of radium had on the 20th century.