The story of Michal Belok, a lawyer who is just beginning to practice his profession. He is not doing well in his personal life. In addition, he suffers from a lack of financial resources. A colleague from his studies and lawyer's apprenticeship, Grzegorz Szram, whom he met by chance, offers him the opportunity to work with an international network law firm and arranges a meeting with the firm's managing partner, Andrzej Rohnert. The choice he makes will affect his life.

It is a sunny summer day in 1943. Poland is under German occupation. A group of young people, inhabitants of a nearby village, goes to the forest to gather fir cones and brushwood to use as firewood. They talk, flirt and make plans for the future. However this outing has an unexpected outcome: a certain event that is new to them will change their lives and the lives of other people who appear as the story develops.

Poland, 1945. Mathilde, a young French Red Cross doctor, is on a mission to help the war survivors. When a nun seeks for her help, she is brought to a convent where several pregnant sisters are hiding, unable to reconcile their faith with their pregnancy. Mathilde becomes their only hope.

In 1960s Poland, young novitiate Anna is on the verge of taking her vows when she discovers a family secret dating back to the years of the German occupation.

Anna and her partner have well-paid jobs, intense sex and go jogging every other morning. They live comfortable yet monotonous bourgeois life. That makes Anna slowly fall apart.

Nazi German officers decide to seize a house where the Pelka family of four live. The four members of the family are Otylia, Czeslaw and two little daughters called Terenia and Jania. From that moment on the life of the Pelka family starts hanging by a thread.

At the age of five, Chris, a young village boy meets his mother, Czesława, who is at the cusp of conquering entertainment industry by adopting a new persona - Violetta Villas. An unbelievably talented, ambitious mother and a sensitive child go on a decades long journey through Warsaw, Paris and Las Vegas.