During an engagement on Broadway in the summer of 1941, Stella Berger, a formerly renowned star of stage and screen in Weimar Germany and outspoken critic of the Nazi regime, is brutally murdered. The police investigation leads to the arrest of a Hungarian street violinist who once had a close relationship with the actress. Misia Safran, a young Jewish refugee and part-time employee at the theater, is convinced that the wrong person is tried for in the murder and sentenced to death. Launching her own investigation, Misia tracks Stella's life from humble beginnings in pre-WWI Jewish Vienna, to her rise on the Berlin stage, and becoming the darling of pre-Nazi cinema, to her exile in America. What she discovers shows that not all that glitters is gold. The narrative takes many twists and turns before the real murderer is revealed.