Emma’s Tapestry tells the story of a German-American private nurse coming to terms with her husband’s disappearance. She sits at the bedside of Jewish heiress Adela Schuster who reminisces over her dear friend Oscar Wilde. It’s 1939 and war has been declared. Terrified her true identity will be discovered and she’ll be interned, Emma destroys all her papers. In 1914, Emma struggles to fit into the colonial lifestyle of Singapore with her export-manager husband Ernest. War is declared. Emma is terrified when German citizens are interned, a fate she escapes thanks to her marriage to an Englishman. She cannot avoid history altogether when German internees foment a mutiny of Indian soldiers. The couple move to Kobe, Japan. Emma embraces motherhood, yet finds herself once again alienated, this time from the local Japanese. Tensions build among locals over the price of rice. Riots break out across the nation. Emma is caught in the melee. As war ends, Spanish flu forces Emma into home isolation. Demoralised, she’s desperate to leave Japan. When she discovers Ernest is having an affair with his Chinese translator, Emma flees with their daughters bound for America. On the day she departs, she learns her family have died of influenza. In a valiant move, she rooms in a boarding house near her German cousins in Colorado. Only, Germans are not welcome in the town. Emma hides her identity, but not well enough, and on Census night her true nationality is revealed to the other boarders: the Ku Klux Klan. Emma retreats, scarcely leaving her room and in fear for her life. Ernest arrives and whisks Emma back to London. Eight years on, he boards a ship bound for Australia and never returns. Emma takes on the pretense of widowhood.