The novel has been translated into Catalan, Czech, French, German, Italian, Latvian, Persian, Polish, Romanian, Serbian,[3] Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.

The main character of the novel is Georgina "Gina" Vitay, a girl from Budapest, the daughter of a general, her mother died early, her governess had to leave Hungary by the beginning of the Second World War.

In 1943, her father, without an explanation, from one day to the next sends Gina away to the Matula Institute, an old and traditional Calvinist girls' boarding school in the fictional Protestant town of Árkod in easternmost Hungary.

Early in spring, her suitor from home, Feri Kuncz, appears in the city and says that he wants to bring her secretly to her father, who he pretends is ill and is waiting for her.

At the end of the novel, Gina finds out that Mr. Kőnig, a teacher whom she hated and looked down on during the school year, is actually Abigail, her greatest helper and the saver of many lives.