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.
Ten years later, the people of Kamenákov are still stirring up trouble, including Pepa, who is now mayor and trying to establish a police force.
A primary school teacher with an inferiority complex about her weight, a bank clerk who suddenly develops a strange rash around her eyes, an aging owner of a 24-hour deli in an unhappy marriage, a lonely man living in the woods and strangers' cottages. They can continue to survive with their problems, hide them, and not deal with them. Or they can fight it and, at the cost of scars and wounds, improve their lives.
