1917. War or no war, monied Europe continues to feel the need for winter sunshine and Gustav Oscarsson brings Katya Olovanova back to Oslo as his bride. Now, Oslo observes, both Oscarsson brothers have fine wives; Charlotta, pretty, transparent, elegant, controlled; and the tempestuous Katya, whom Oslo society admires with a salacious shudder - the Bolshevik's massacre of her family in the forest hanging about her like a shadowy blood mist. When Katya vanishes in San Francisco, Charotta is left with the pieces - and with the daughter, the second Katya, echo of the first, who burns as brilliantly as her mother, two comets on an inevitable parabola of destruction.