America 1962: The United States lost World War II and was divided between the Germans in the East and the Japanese in the West. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. Frank Frink is a dealer of counterfeit Americana who is hiding his Jewish ancestry. Nobusuke Tagomi is the Japanese trade minister in San Francisco, unsure of his standing within the bureaucracy. Juliana Frink, Frank’s ex-wife, may be more important than she realizes. They gradually realize their connections to each other just as they realize that something is not quite right about their world. And it seems as though the answers might lie with Hawthorne Abendsen, a mysterious and reclusive author whose bestselling novel describes a world in which the US won the War.