An American goes to pre-war Germany to find his mother and discovers her in a concentration camp. With the help of an American-born widowed countess he seeks to engineer her escape.

Hella lives in a boarding house and has various romantic adventures before settling down with vacuum cleaner salesman Winkler.

After young Mary Gibson discovers that her older sister Jacqueline has disappeared, she leaves her boarding school and heads to New York City to track down her sibling. But Mary gets drawn deeper into the mystery.