Belmedon, 1914

Gabriel de Metz is the thirteen year-old son of wealthy Parisian art gallery owners. When the family takes its annual trip to Vienna to pick up prints, he thinks it will be the same as all their other summers there - stuffy and boring. But the Archduke is assassinated in Sarajevo, and Austria becomes hostile to outsiders. The de Metzes decide to cut their sojourn short, but Gabriel becomes separated from his parents, and finds himself in charge of his little sister in the midst of a Europe mobilizing for war.