The snow is stained with blood around the tower of Kransberg castle. Just a few metres away, the Führer is in his bunker, steeped in fear and delirium after the attempt on his life in July 1944. Johann Maria Adami, however, has no time to think of those responsible for his internment in Dachau. Professor Adami has a mission: to discover the truth behind the suspicious death of a Nazi soldier. Was it suicide or a plot against Hitler? He needs all his intelligence not only if he has any hope of saving himself, but also to keep safe the person he loves most.

The snow is also stained with blood around the walls of the concentration camp in Risiera di Trieste. It’s not the first time and, as Ada knows, not the last either. It seems impossible to find the killer in a city riddled with murders, where the air is permeated with ashes and fear. While trying to track down the murderer, Ada is lonelier than ever: her father, Professor Johann Maria Adami, has been arrested by the Nazis for dissent and taken she knows not where, and her boyfriend has disappeared among the partisans. All she has left is her heart and her medical skills… as well as a secret she must protect at all costs.

Salento, late 1950s. Lorenzo and Agnese have lost everything. Their father has sold the family’s soap factory, a legacy he experienced as a millstone, but which, for the siblings,  represented a reason for living. Now, to remain there as ordinary workers for a new, arrogant owner is a dreadful perspective. On an impulse, Lorenzo decides to leave, intending to find the money to take back what belongs to him. Agnese, on the other hand, decides to stay, unwilling to abandon her home of talc and soap. This leads to a serious and apparently fatal division between the siblings, taking them in opposite and unforeseen directions.

Sia Carillo is an intrusive, anticonformist young woman, and the bitter enemy of Derek Hill, a frosty prince with a dark secret that makes him wary and distant. The hatred between them has no limits, but conceals infinite attraction. Olivia Leed has lost her voice because of a ghost that prevents her from breathing, but Edgar Chen reminds her of the beauty in small things. Untidy, self-deprecating and far too clumsy, Edgar lives between panic attacks and bursts of anger that express remorse and feelings of guilt.

What these four young people have in common is a traumatic past that has left deep marks on their psyche. Brought together by an unorthodox woman doctor, they must cooperate in order to build a future in the world of journalism, working for a prestigious media company. Through a series of increasingly demanding challenges, their friendship is instrumental in the processing of their pain.

Emanuele’s father is a Jungian psychologist, a magician capable of healing wounded souls. As a child, Emanuele soon learns that in order to survive in his father’s orbit it’s best for him to be a peripheral figure. After all, his mother keeps saying “You know what he’s like” whenever she talks about his father. But Emanuele doesn’t really know and, after his father dies, very little is left of him except an apartment no one wants, where the invisible mists of the lives and sorrows he had healed, oiled and straightened still linger.

So Emanuele decides to buy this flat and to live permanently in that atmosphere still hovering after his father’s life was cut short, because – first as a son, then as a writer – he wants to reconstruct the identity of a man who never left anything of himself in writing.