19 year old Irena Gut is promoted to housekeeper in the home of a highly respected Nazi officer in Poland when she finds out that the Jewish ghetto is about to be liquidated. Determined to help twelve Jewish workers, she decides to shelter them in the safest place she can think of – the basement of the German Major's house. Over the next eight months, Irena uses her wit, humour and immense courage to hide her friends as long as possible.

Poland, 1982, the politically heated days of communist martial law. Two coal miner brothers react differently to the oppressive police state. While Tadek prefers to retreat into neutrality, Janek chooses active engagement in the democratic underground. When Janek asks Tadek to store some anti-government leaflets on the second anniversary of Solidarity's 1980 strikes, he triggers a spiral of events that will have everyone's allegiances and characters severely tested.

Three-year-old Nikola Szlezyngier disappears in unexplained circumstances and her parents Angelika and Dawid are the main suspects. Angelika contacts an old friend Joanna Chylka, a brilliant, cynical and successful lawyer to help. With her new apprentice Kordian, Joanna will try to bring the case to a happy close.