Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana

It was a time of steam locomotives and horses, of city-states and principalities ruled by monarchs – but it did not take place in the past. It was a time of civil war between Protestants and Catholics over direct access to the Messiah – but the Messiah wasn't Jesus. It was a place where Orthodox spires dotted the landscape, and people addressed each other with matronymics instead of patronymics – but it wasn't a Slavic country, or even in Europe or Asia. It was a culture that venerated the great writers and composers from prior centuries – but their names were not Bach, or Shakespeare, or Beethoven. And when mid-winter rolled around, everyone celebrated the traditional holiday by decorating fir trees – but it was not Christmas. In short, it was a time very much like past centuries of our own – except that it was different. Something had happened to change the course of history.

Thus begins the story of Ilya Erynovich and Katerinya Emlynovna, a lifelong search for the meaning of something from the past. Ilya doesn't know where he came from, or how old he is. He seems to know things he couldn't possibly have learned. He has skills he couldn't possibly have acquired. He is sought out, and sometimes captured, by political and religious leaders, and constantly followed by anonymous stalkers.

At first, he doesn't even know that he is Ilya. He wakes up one evening in a train station, unable to remember anything about himself, including his own name. As he searches for someone – anyone – who might know who he is, he encounters Katerinya, a young writer, who takes an interest in his predicament and offers to help. She takes him in, and although strangers, they soon develop a mutual affection that blossoms into love.

This turns out to be good memory therapy for Ilya, and he recovers his knowledge of the last 20 years or so – but then it becomes stuck. He can't remember anything prior to that. And it soon becomes clear to them that Ilya's past self has left messages for his present self – there is something about the past that his present self needs to know – but the clues are cryptic and hard to decipher.

Over the course of a 24 year love affair, buffeted by political and religious intrigue, two epidemics, and a civil war, Ilya and Katerinya finally figure out who he really is ... or was. But it's not what either had expected.