Chicago, 1918. Ruth Alden is stuck selling real estate in a city consumed by war, her life a gray stretch of mundane offices and restless evenings, until the day a beggar catches her eye on a street corner. In a moment of impulse, she buys something from him. What she finds hidden inside will pull her into a world of passports, foreign names, and dangerous secrets. Gerry Hull is returning from France, and Ruth's feelings for him have never been more tangled with guilt and longing. But as she uncovers the truth behind the documents in her possession, she faces a question that no office or parlor can answer: when history demands everything, what is a woman with ambition and nothing to lose supposed to do? This is wartime Chicago as you've never seen it, a city of double identities, whispered plans, and one ordinary woman suddenly standing at the center of something far larger than herself.
