Purity Tyler is a newly minted graduate weighed down by her mother's stifling love and $130,000 in student debt. Her family is unsupportive: her mother works part-time as a clerk at a local grocery store and lives a reclusive life, and Pip has never known her father. She desperately tries to find out his identity, if only for practical reasons: perhaps he can help her pay off her student debt.

That's when the mysterious Andreas Wolf enters her life with his 'Sunshine Project.' Wolf is an East German dissident who created a project to expose social injustices. When Pip is offered an internship with this organization, she accepts for personal reasons. She hopes that an organization that trades in secrets will help her discover her father's identity.

Pip is not so naive as to believe that she was chosen based solely on her personal qualities. Gradually, Wolf's true motives are revealed to her. The story spirals, revealing more and more details about the characters' pasts, and Pip's very existence becomes the intersection of many destinies she never suspected.