Two worlds collide in this novel - the romantic, elegant world of Austrian aristocracy and the brutal world of Nazi occupation. The narrator, Reyna von Meinert, is a Viennese girl who grows from childhood into young womanhood as the Third Reich rises and falls. The Meinert family's best friends and neighbors are the Rombergs, residents of the Water Castle: Eugene, a wealthy, generous, Jewish dairy owner who is in love with Reyna's mother; Resi, Eugene's sensual, Catholic, actress-singer wife, who is passionately attracted to Reyna's father; and Eli, their sickly son, Reyna's playmate. Reyna's father contrives to protect them all, but Eugene and Eli are eventually forced to flee. As the world around her becomes more and more bizarre, Reyna consorts with all kinds of strange characters - including an enigmatic dwarf named Hanna Roth, soothsayer to Hitler. In the end, Reyna, and her countess grandmother - who lives in a dream world of the glorious past - must face the marauding Russian troops who represent the new reality.