Every year Elisabeth Danzinger - an unassuming yet resolute middle-aged woman - travels to the Danish island of Mn to spend one week at a lavish hotel called The Tamarisks, which was once, fifteen years ago in 1945, her family's beloved second home. With each annual visit, Elisabeth stays in the same room and unfailingly carries out the same routine: she walks familiar paths; she visits the local museum to peer at artefacts that once belonged to her family; she relocates an old bench underneath which her fingers to find the long-ago carved initials 'E' and 'D'; and she even unscrews the panel around an old bath tub in order to retrieve a piece of crumbling paper on which is written her name and that of Daniel Eberhardt - Elisabeth's cousin, with whom she was very much in love.
As Elisabeth revisits the places of childhood, her family's devastating history is slowly revealed and we soon discover her annual pilgrimage is part of a long-standing family promise to meet again in Mn after the War. A promise that only she has fulfilled, and she has no reason to suspect this year will be any different from all the others.
