Tempered by the war and devastated by the loss of his best friend sent to a concentration camp by the town SS commander, young Jan Neuman finds himself fleeing his country when the government is deposed in a communist coup. A myopic world too preoccupied with the euphoria of victory over the Nazis and the darkening cloud of the Cold War to see the plight of the displaced soon puts him to the test. In the ruins of Germany, sewers of Paris, refugee camps of Italy, and ultimately America, he comes to realize that freedom can exact a terrible price. He plumbs the highs and lows of guilt, betrayal, loneliness, romance, love, despair, and vengeance. Ultimately, in a chance meeting and confrontation with his old nemesis, the former SS commander, now in the service of his adopted country, he realizes that because of his steadfast adherence to principles, he has become an anachronism, suspended in a world that has passed him by. The Cold War ends. He answers the yearning in his heart and returns to the place of his birth, only to find himself cast adrift--a foreigner in his own country and stranger in his own home.