The turmoil of the last days of the war, a young woman in search of a future and the happiness of books
In the spring of 1945, 18-year-old Eva Liebe is faced with nothing: in bombed-out Berlin, she has lost her family, her fiancé and all of her belongings. With the last of her strength, she makes her way to Andernach on the Rhine, where her uncle runs a bookstore. However he was sent to the front, and her aunt initially receives Eva with suspicion, – for the bookstore is a secret meeting place for intellectuals critical of the Nazis.
It is only when Eva proves her affinity for books and forms a tender bond with the war-disabled carpenter Georg that something like a new happiness seems possible. Until the bookstore is hit by a bomb in the middle of reading…