Alsace, France, 1772

When fourteen-year-old Margaret Laemmer awakens in the morning, she has no idea a chance meeting on the river will lead her to her to risk her life. In an act of raw courage, she saves two gypsy boys from drowning. The boys' mother rewards her with an identical pair of amulets, telling her they will bring good fortune to whomever she gives them.

Years go by and she gives the amulets to her sons as they depart home. Her desire to see her family reunited becomes imbued in the amulets as they are passed from one generation to the next.

In the dying days of the Second World War, two enemy soldiers, come face to face on the banks of the in Germany on the banks of the Elbe River. Each soldier wears an amulet identical to the other.