Billy Lange is born in 1909 on the Isle of Wight, England. As a child, Billy is entranced by the baron's daughter, the elusive and willful Karin von Weinbrenner. After the First World War, Karin and Billy are reunited on the baron's Frankfurt estate, where they bond over their fascination with the Wild West novels of Karl May, the most popular author in the German language. Brilliantly conceived, deeply researched, and profoundly moving, this is an unusual love story, an historical epic, and a lucid meditation on Europe's violent twentieth century.