Warsaw, 1945. The invading Nazis are gone and, in a symbolic gesture, the preserved heart of Polish composer and national hero Frédéric Chopin is returned. Under German rule, even the mention of Chopin was forbidden; now, as the war-battered nation reassembles itself, author Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz recommences work on his biography of the great man. A strange woman contacts him, carrying revelatory letters that she claims the composer wrote her great-grandmother, his lover. But is the woman a fraud? Are the letters forgeries? And since they show Chopin in a less than flattering light, would Poland prefer to suppress them?