After an exile of more than fifteen years in Africa, Leah Palmer returns to Berlin. She, who was one the youngest queens of the Berlin scene, one of the pioneers incarnating the New Woman is convicted for the murder of her husband, gassed and wounded on the front. Her scandalous trial for mercy killing, skilfully manipulated by her in-laws who never accepted her into the fold, takes away her young son Stephan of four years of age along with her fortune. When she returns, broken, worn out by fifteen years of volunteering in the African bush, forsaken by all, she has only one purpose in mind. She wants to reveal Stephan the truth, tell him of the true love story that she shared with his father, why she felt forced by circumstances but against her will to do what she did, the terrible pact in a society where euthanasia remains taboo. Stephan is twenty-one and is on the verge of getting married. He is studying medicine like his father before him but remains hostage to a lie carefully tended by his grandmother and grandfather. But Leah is Jewish, and confronted to faces her in-laws swept by the National Socialism. She will be plunged into the most frightening descent into hell in the slums of a German nation undergoing the worst depression of its history. Leah Palmer will not be allowed inside her house and will have to survive for months with the homeless and tramps, in a park facing her villa...