In 1900, Lady Anna Winterbourne travels to an Egypt under British occupation. There she falls in love with Sharif al-Baroudi, an Egyptian patriot utterly committed to the cause of his country's freedom. A hundred years later, Isabel Parkman, an American divorcee and a descendant of Anna and Sharif, goes to Egypt, taking with her an old family trunk. The notebooks and journals she finds in the trunk will reveal her ancestors' lives and will profoundly affect her own.