Stephen Friedman, a real estate agent in Southern California in the 1970s, has long suppressed his curiosity about his Jewish heritage and the family that he presumably lost during the Holocaust. But that changes, and dramatically so, with the death of an elderly Jewish woman who lived nearby. Not only does Friedman discover that the woman was his mother, he also learns that she possessed a priceless relic that she left to a local Holocaust museum. What's more, she cryptically indicated that she knew where the remaining relics in the set --- the five stones of David --- were hidden. Her death marks the beginning of Friedman's race to find the stones and uncover the truth about himself, his family, and their concentration camp friends. Meanwhile, Roth Braun, the son of the commandant of the camp where Friedman's mother was detained, is also on a quest to retrieve the stones --- and with them, the power he believed his father lost to the Jews. He and his thugs manage to stay one step ahead of Friedman throughout much of the book, and they catch up quickly enough when Friedman seems to have gained an advantage over them. That storyline is interwoven with the story of a courageous and strong group of women in the 1940s who are forced to make difficult decisions at the Polish concentration camp where Braun's father controls their lives. The decisions the women make have long-lasting ramifications that continue to affect the lives of their descendants decades later in America.