When her archeologist father died

Loya Kaplan left Israel seemingly for good, severing all ties to her past. Twenty-five years later, she''s a flight attendant without friends or family, happiest in the temporary and artificial world of airports. Sleepwalking through life, Loya is summoned back to Israel following the death of David—her father''s friend, or rival, or lover, or nemesis?—who has named Loya as his heir.

Returning now to a country that has become alien to her

and the house where she was raised, filled with relics not only of her own past but of her family and even ancient history, Loya''s story splits, deliriously, in two: the life she once led in an improvised neighborhood, filled with concentration- camp refugees and secrets, colliding with the antiseptic, well-fed present day.