On the day the Nazis march down the rue de Belleville, fourteen-year-old Maral Pegorian is living with her family in Paris, where, like many other Armenians who survived the genocide in their homeland, her parents have come to build a new life. The adults immediately set about gathering food and provisions, bracing for the deprivation they know all too well - but Maral, her brother Missak, and their close friends Zaven and Barkev are spurred to action of another sort, finding secret and not-so-secret ways to resist their oppressors. When Zaven and Barkev flee to avoid conscription, Maral finally realizes that the Occupation is not simply a temporary outrage to be endured - and when only one brother returns after many fraught months, the contours of Maral's world are changed irrevocably.