It is 1946, and a stunned Erope is beginning its slow recovery from the ravages of World War II. Adam Miller has come to Venice to visit his widowed mother and to try to forget the horrors he has witnessed as a US Army war crimes investigator in Germany. Nothing has changed in Venice - not the beautiful palazzos, not the violins at Florians, not the shifting water that makes the city, untouched by bombs, still seem a dream. But when Adam falls in love with Claudia, a Jewish girl scarred by her devastating experiences during the war, he is forced to confront another Venice, a city still at war with itself, haunted by atrocities it would rather forget...