Paintings by Monet, Degas, and Renoir… Imagine a magnificent family collection mysteriously vanishing during WWII! The narrator, Pauline, knows from family rumours that one of her great-grandfathers, Jules Strauss, was an art collector. A considerable aura has grown up around this figure. Despite his unfailing eye, he sold his acquisitions too soon. One day, a distant cousin hands Pauline a scribbled list of the paintings that once belonged to Strauss. There is no trace of these pieces in the family apartment. Where are they now? What happened in 1942? Pauline, a homemaker looking for a subject for a book, is no art historian. But, driven by insatiable curiosity that soon borders on obsession, she develops a passion for these missing paintings. Her search takes her from the Louvre to a museum in Dresden, via Gestapo archives.