A large generational novel about love and life. On a Monday morning, Georg von Heuken receives terrible news from his secretary: His father, Richard von Heuken, has been admitted to the hospital with a second heart attack. It turns out that he can no longer manage his business in the publishing house - an opportunity for his son to finally take over the leadership of all the family-owned publishing houses. In Ortheil's novel, with the father’s decline, the generation that sought success carefree after the war loses its power, reluctantly making way for their sons. Against this backdrop, Hanns-Josef Ortheil has written a significant family and generational novel, in which the struggle for an inheritance is not the only focus - but also the quest for a mysterious woman.