Emi­ly, the daugh­ter of an inter­faith cou­ple, is new­ly mar­ried and preg­nant when she trav­els to Aus­tralia to vis­it her ail­ing grand­moth­er. A mys­te­ri­ous con­ver­sa­tion with her grand­moth­er unleash­es a tor­rent of mem­o­ries. Emi­ly is cast back to a sum­mer long ago, when she found her­self on an uncan­ny jour­ney back in time and across con­ti­nents, encoun­ter­ing her mater­nal fore­bear­ers when they were her age. We jour­ney with Emi­ly from the Aus­tralian Out­back, where she meets a young Abo­rig­i­nal man, to racist, anti­se­mit­ic South Africa dur­ing World War II, to the midst of a pogrom in Lithua­nia, and then all the way back to the Baby­lon of bib­li­cal times.

Emi­ly has deep encoun­ters with the young women she meets, as well as with the com­plex Jew­ish his­to­ry that shapes them — a his­to­ry of wan­der­ing and exile, but also of lumi­nous con­nec­tion and belong­ing. On her jour­ney, Emi­ly real­izes that this vital his­to­ry has ulti­mate­ly also shaped her, reveal­ing the shin­ing Jew­ish iden­ti­ty that lies at the core of her own soul.