The novel was originally published in Polish as Król kier znów na wylocie in 2006 and was translated into English by Phillip Boehm as Chasing the King of Hearts in 2013.

Living in Warsaw, Poland around 1940, Izolda and her family witness the city transform into a ghetto created to contain Jewish citizens.

After she marries a Jewish man named Shayek, they escape the Warsaw Ghetto and obtain fake Polish identities as the Pawlicki’s.

When Izolda finds out where her husband is, she begins working as a smuggler to send Shayek packages of food and supplies until he is transferred to Ebensee, a subcamp of Mauthausen.

She travels to Vienna in attempts to gain information about how to rescue her husband from Mauthausen, but she ends up being arrested by the Viennese Gestapo and tortured until she reveals that she is a Jew.

She finally reaches her King of Hearts, but a few years later, after having a few children together, Shayek ends up leaving Izolda, consumed by guilt that his entire family died except for him.