Renate Welsh's novel is a fascinating story about a woman's unsuccessful quest to build a home, to determine an identity. It is based on family documents of the author's great-great-grandfather, a representative in the Frankfurt Constitutive Assembly and one of the leaders of the failed revolution of 1848 in Germany. He and his son eventually emigrated to the United States. The writings and correspondence of these two men appear in their original form in the novel, indicated by italics. The female protagonist, Pauline, is married to the son. There are no letters preserved from her, so the author lends Pauline a voice and attempts to correct an injustice done to this woman of the nineteenth century. The two very different voices are layered one upon the other, and their juxtaposition creates a formal dialogic structure. Welsh situates the documentary materials within a fictional context.

Thus fiction stands side by side with fact, subjective conjecture with objective statement. Pauline's story ends in insanity in 1855.