Calliope Adham - young, strong-willed, and recently widowed - is schoolmistress in the village of Molyvos when Hitler's army invades Greece in 1941. Well-read and linguistically gifted, she is recruited by the Germans to act as their liaison officer. It is the beginning of a personal and national saga that will last for several decades. Calliope's wartime duties bring her into close contact with Lieutenant Lorenz Umbreit, the Wehrmacht commander. The schoolmistress is an active member of the Greek Resistance, yet her friendship with the German blossoms against all odds, in a fishing village seething with dread and suspicion. Amid privation and death, the villagers' hostility finally erupts, but the bond between Calliope and Umbreit survives, taking unforeseeable turns as Greece is ravaged by civil war and oppressed by military dictatorship.