When the pandemic hits, Kristofer is forced to shutter his successful restaurant in Reykjavik, sending him into a spiral of uncertainty, even as his memory seems to be failing. But an uncanny bolt from the blue, a message from Miko Nakamura, a woman whom he'd known in the sixties when they were students in London, both inspires and rattles him, as he is drawn inexorably back into a love story that has marked him for life. Even as the pandemic upends his world, Kristofer finds himself pulled toward an answer to the mystery of Miko's sudden departure decades before, compelling him to travel to London and Japan as the virus threatens to shut everything down.