In the summer of 1915, days after the government orders the deportation of the Armenians, journalist Vartan Balian, an Armenian, is imprisoned by politicians hoping to silence him. Soon, after a daring escape, he embarks on an odyssey across the vast empire in desperate search of his wife, Maro, and their young son Tomas, whose own stories we gradually learn. In the ensuing years the Balians will each confront the calamities of war as well as the secrets of the human heart.