Provoked by a journalist's inquiry, Herma Warner recalls her childhood and youth in Indonesia during the 1920s and 1930s. Born to Dutch parents in Batavia, she grew up there in privilege, befriending Indonesian girls and families, and developing an interest in their way of life and language. Then, just as she reaches adulthood, she must confront the fact that the political situation in the early 1940s calls into question everything she had understood as her home, her identity, and her great love. She approaches this time in retrospect, focusing on details and moments that slowly come together like a puzzle, in the act of remembering and in light of the many mysteries that arise.