Pregnant with her first child, Diny Branson is haunted by her mother's death years ago in the Hudson River. Was it suicide or accident? Slowly, Diny weaves the many threads of Lise's tragic life—from a fairyland youth to a happy marriage, then through the travails of losing a child.

Diny learns how the forces of history, like the coming Holocaust, inflict losses, such as loss of language, that create other more subtle losses—and how the forces of nature, like the majestic Hudson, can be both threat and comfort.