A house carved fine as a jewellery box, a painted garden, an angel in a palm tree ... these are some of the marvels of the Russian estate on which Nina grows up, surrounded by her beautiful mother, her eccentric father, her sister and the housekeeper, who passes on the old Russian folktales and traditions. After the death of her mother, Nina takes the difficult decision to leave her homeland and marry a complete stranger. She arrives in England on the brink of the First World War and must adjust to a society very different from her own. Over the next eighty years, the family scatter across the globe in the wake of the Russian Revolution and two world wars. It is only when Nina's own granddaughter begins a search for her roots that the family's tragic history can be pieced together for the first time.