When they first met, John, a dash­ing Lat­vian refugee, a physics Ph.D, is hop­ing to set­tle down. Michaele, a fast-talk­ing Amer­i­can col­lege stu­dent, a sec­u­lar Jew, is hun­gry for an inde­pen­dent life as a writer and his­to­ri­an. When they meet again years lat­er, Michaele is ready. Or so she thinks. And any­way, oppo­sites attract, right? This might be a sim­ple sto­ry of two peo­ple who meet, fall in love, and get mar­ried. But of course, no mar­riage is sim­ple. The life Michaele and John build togeth­er inter­min­gles sweet­ness — their love of good food, enter­tain­ing, and fam­i­ly — and com­pli­ca­tions — their eth­nic and reli­gious dif­fer­ences, the trau­ma John endured dur­ing WWII and its after­math, Michaele’s thwart­ed ambi­tions, and John’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with rye bread! As he opens a rye bread bak­ery, Michaele embarks on a Euro­pean jour­ney to under­stand where John grew up, exca­vat­ing poignant sto­ries of war, pri­va­tion and resilience. She reeval­u­ates her assump­tions and prej­u­dices, appre­ci­at­ing how rye bread rep­re­sents every­thing about John’s home­land that he loved and lost. Michaele comes to love rye bread, too.