Birgitte Thorsen, everybody's go-to musician when it comes to musical interpretation has stopped hearing the music. She is in a frozen wasteland of complete deafness. She goes into analysis with the famed Emma Green, and learns that her deafness is a result of her unusual childhood. Eventually, she begins to hear again and is able to conduct the Munich Philharmonic without the aid of her musician spouse. At the same time, Astrid Paul has a new and very young patient in analysis, who will bring up the difficult issue surrounding the fact that she has no children of her own. She, too, realizes that she does not have to be Sebastian's mother in order to do effective therapy. This book is a sequel to Who is Francesca Oliver? The same protagonists appear in this novel, as in the first.