Miri goes grocery shopping in wartime Paris; French policeman Monsieur Thireau kindly stops her from falling.

French police raid the apartment building; Miri cannot find her mother and is forced onto a bus with Madame Rosenbaum and Nora.

Madame Rosenbaum removes the yellow stars from Miri's and Nora's sweaters and urges Miri to escape with Nora toward Switzerland.

Miri escapes with Nora between the stopped buses outside the Vélodrome d'Hiver as a woman stands to shield them.

A German soldier stops Miri on the street; a nun named Sister Félicité intervenes and claims Miri lives at her convent.

Sister Félicité arranges fake identity cards for Miri and Nora; Miri adopts the pseudonym Marie Cadieux.

Miri and Nora are hidden in the back of a truck and transported to the town of Chenonceaux.

Miri arrives at a convent school and learns that Nora has been placed with a local Catholic couple.

Sister Dominique takes the girls to Château de Chenonceau and shows Miri that the Vichy border lies across the castle's river.

Sister Dominique falls and breaks her leg; Miri volunteers to take over a secret smuggling operation through the castle.

Miri escorts a woman hiding in the bushes through the castle's ballroom bridge and hands her to a passeur on the Vichy side.

Miri escorts an injured British airman through the dark castle grounds and returns to the convent covered in blood.

Sister Annunciata creates a diversion by fainting dramatically across the priest; Miri seizes Nora from her Catholic baptism and runs.

Catherine's ghost signals a break in the guards; Miri leads Nora, Beatrice, and Elodie through the castle bridge to freedom.

Miri and Nora are reunited with their surviving families in Switzerland; Beatrice and Elodie learn their families did not survive the war.

Miri lives as a Jewish refugee in wartime Paris when French police conduct a brutal roundup of Jewish families, forcing her to flee the Vélodrome d'Hiver with her young neighbor Nora. A courageous nun shelters them and provides false identities, then arranges for them to be transported to a convent school in the village of Chenonceaux. There, Miri secretly becomes a people smuggler, guiding Jewish refugees and a wounded British airman through the ballroom bridge of Château de Chenonceau to the relative safety of Vichy France. When Nora is about to be permanently lost to a Catholic baptism, Miri seizes her from the ceremony and leads a small group of Jewish girls through the castle bridge to freedom. The story closes with Miri and Nora reunited with their surviving families in Switzerland, though the full cost of war is felt in the fates of their companions.

Miri's escape from Paris and journey to freedom.

Miri's family and the Rosenbaums celebrate Shabbos together in their small Paris apartment.

Miri buys a large tomato at the market; her mother admires it and both recall their plentiful garden in Berlin.

During the roundup, Madame Rosenbaum pretends that Miri is her daughter to protect her from the police.

As Miri and the others are led away from their apartment building, she sees the family's potted geranium smashed on the street.

Sister Félicité hides Miri and Nora in a small convent room and instructs Miri to use the name Marie.

Sister Félicité tells Miri that the Jews held at the Vélodrome are being loaded into tightly packed trucks and taken away.

Miri wakes in the truck to find Nora gone; she panics until told that Nora has been placed with a local family.

Miri meets the other girls at the convent school: devout Jacqueline and sharp-eyed, questioning Beatrice.

Miri sneaks out of the convent at night to search for Nora but is caught on the street by Mother Agnès.

Miri escorts a mother and young son through the castle; German guards hear her and bind her hands behind her back.

Beatrice secretly unties Miri's bound wrists in the dormitory and reveals she has not heard from her parents in a year.

Miri spots Nora at Sunday Mass with the couple she now lives with; Sister Annunciata holds Miri back from acting.

Miri argues with Catherine that Nora's life is more important than a flower garden; her yelling attracts nearby Nazi guards.

Guards escort Miri, Beatrice, and Jacqueline from the castle; locked in the dormitory, Miri reveals her Jewish identity to Jacqueline.

As the groups separate, the passeur Raven blesses Miri in Yiddish and Miri replies in her mother's language: 'Be brave.'

Before the roundup shatters her world, Miri shares a close family life with the Rosenbaums, celebrating Shabbos together and treasuring small pleasures like a single ripe tomato as symbols of what the war has taken from them. The violence and chaos of the roundup force Miri to adapt quickly as familiar faces turn cruel and the last comforts of her neighborhood are destroyed around her. Hidden at a convent under a false identity, Miri struggles to locate Nora and navigate life alongside suspicious girls and watchful nuns who may or may not be trusted. Her repeated acts of courage — sneaking out to search for Nora, smuggling a mother and child through the castle at night — push her into increasingly dangerous confrontations with Nazi guards. The tension between safety and action builds to a breaking point when Miri publicly claims Nora, and the story closes with Miri and her companions reaching the passeur who will carry them onward to freedom.

Life in hiding and acts of resistance in occupied France.

Miri recalls how her family was forced to flee their comfortable Berlin home and garden after their neighborhood was destroyed during Kristallnacht.

Miri's school principal warns her about an upcoming roundup; her father goes into hiding believing only men will be targeted.

Beatrice sharply snaps at Miri during rosary prayers for muttering something that does not sound like the correct Catholic prayer.

Miri first notices a stern woman in old-fashioned black clothing staring at her with wide, amazed eyes on the street.

Sister Dominique unexpectedly addresses Miri by her real name instead of Marie at the castle, revealing she knows Miri's true identity.

An unexpected voice warns Miri during a smuggling mission that a guard has heard her and tells her to invent a cover story.

Castle housekeeper Bette helps Miri by elaborating on her cover story to the soldier and then insists she cannot know the full truth.

Elodie accidentally identifies Miri's sleep-yelling as Yiddish; Beatrice quickly silences her to protect them both from exposure.

Miri realizes the mysterious woman she has been working with in the castle garden is the ghost of Catherine de' Medici.

Catherine de' Medici's ghost explains that only her respective gardeners can see her and insists Miri must stay to tend the garden.

Miri confronts Catherine about the Huguenot massacre, arguing that killing minorities for their beliefs is no different from Nazi persecution of Jews.

Catherine tells Miri she has heard that a baptism is planned the next day; Miri realizes it must be for Nora.

Catherine reveals that the frightening sound Miri heard was a cracking roof tile, not a gunshot, giving Miri hope her mother survived.

Beatrice meets Miri at the castle inn outbuilding and reveals that she is also Jewish and wants to escape with the group.

Miri returns to Chenonceaux after the war to find Catherine's ghost gone; she sings a Hebrew song at Catherine's grave.

The key turning points in Miri's story begin with the losses her family suffered before the novel opens, and the dangerous miscalculation that leaves her alone in the roundup, setting the stage for her determination to survive and protect others. A series of small but telling revelations — a nun who knows her real name, a ghostly figure who stares at her with recognition — gradually expose the secret world Miri has entered at the convent and the castle. Her supernatural friendship with the ghost of Catherine de' Medici forces Miri to grapple with questions of power, responsibility, and the cost of persecuting minorities, holding up a dark mirror to her own experience as a persecuted Jew. The emotional climaxes of the story — Elodie accidentally betraying her Jewishness, Miri identifying Catherine's true nature, and Beatrice finally revealing her own hidden identity — reshape Miri's understanding of who her true allies are. Catherine's ultimate act of atonement opens the path to freedom, and Miri's postwar return to honor her memory brings the novel's deepest friendship to a quiet and moving close.