Sarah is already in her late twenties with an acting career in London
and a baby on the way when she learns from her father about Gaglow, his
family's grand East German country estate that was seized before the
war. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the estate will now come back to
them.
Sarah attempts to solicit from her father all he knows about Gaglow: the
three lucky sisters, Bina, Martha, and Eva; their masterly governess,
Fraulein Schulze; their father, Wolf Belgard, a prosperous Jewish grain
dealer; their mother, Marianna, a "vulgar woman" whose children
privately mocked her; and their older brother, Emanuel, wretched from
the family to serve his country.
Alternating between Sarah's life and her grandmother's childhood during
the First World War, Summer at Gaglow unites four generations of an
extraordinary family across the vast reaches of silence, place, loss,
and time.