A house carved fine as a jewellery box, a painted garden, an angel in a palm tree. These are only some of the marvels of the Russian estate on which Nina Karsavina grows up, surrounded by her beautiful mother, her eccentric father, Katya her elder sister and the housekeeper Darya who teaches her the old Russian folktales and traditions. But when her father gradually loses his mind after the death of her mother, Nina takes the difficult decision to leave her homeland behind and to marry a complete stranger. She arrives in England on the brink of the First World War and must adjust to a society very different from her own. Meanwhile, her sister Katya settles in Over the next eighty years, the family will scatter across the globe in the wake of the Russian revolution and two world wars. It is only when Nina's own granddaughter Julia, an artist, begins a search for her roots that the family's tragic history can be pieced together for the first time.