A young violin prodigy grows up in Harbin and Shanghai amidst the absurd and often deadly politics of mid-century China. Under the dual influences of her revolutionary parents and her White Russian intellectual tutors (who provide her with a link-personal and tragic-to the composer Dmitri Shostakovich), she is drawn into a precarious world of ideology and espionage where music must serve not only the masses, but also the unpredictable whims and grand strategies of great leaders. Moving between China, Europe, and New Zealand, the young protagonist learns how music and its artifacts link individuals across time in a chain alternately transcendent and tragic. She also encounters the compromises that talent, fate, and family force upon her.