Set in the early days of Adolf Hitler's rise to power and present-day England, the story follows Ava, an art student at Oxford University, who inherits her beloved grandfather's London art gallery after his death. He leaves her a letter with one last wish—that she recover a treasured Vincent van Gogh painting deemed degenerate and looted by the Nazis in 1937. Throughout this daunting task, she unravels her grandparent's harrowing struggle in Nazi Germany. As her search for the lost art deepens, her emotions and beliefs are tested. She faces conflict with her German boyfriend who is hiding a grim past, as well as confronts tribulations in Switzerland as she gets closer to justice and to discovering the dark history of World War II still haunts the present.