A cryptic exchange with a cousin leads Pauline Baer de Perignon to wonder what became of her great-grandfather's impressive art collection. Prior to his death during World War II, Jules Strauss is alleged to have sold his many paintings—among them great Impressionist works by Monet and Degas—at auction. Yet Strauss was Jewish, and Pauline begins to suspect that perhaps the paintings were stolen by the Nazis. Her quest to recover some of the paintings takes the reader from the Louvre to the Musée d'Orsay and back into the past, drawing to light an overlooked element of Nazi cruelty. But it's when Pauline seeks to reconnect with her family's long-suppressed Jewish heritage—another casualty of the Nazis—that this riveting memoir is at its most affecting.