The smoke that once hovered over the concentration camps of Poland never left this world. It followed the survivors of the Holocaust wherever they went, and then settled in the lungs of their children. In the seamy atmosphere of Miami Beach's Collins Avenue, Mila Katz, a streaky card shark and confidante of mobsters, lives by the wits with which she survived the Holocaust.

The secret about her son, Isaac Borowski, whom she abandoned in Poland, remains buried until it is slowly revealed in a series of deathbed confessions to her nurses.

But there is another son, Duncan Katz, born in America and raised as an avenging vigilante, a Jewish fighting machine, a prisoner of inherited rage who becomes a Nazi-hunter, driven by the crimes committed against his parents. He loses his job with the government when he hatches a case against a former concentration camp guard, Feodor Malyshko. And he loses his family when his wife leaved him in order to shield their daughter from the Katz legacy of pain and unmourned loss.

Duncan is exiled to New York City, where he stalks Malyshko and enacts the family's tragedy in another generation. Through his godfather, mafia chieftain Larry Breibart, Duncan learns of his half-brother, Isaac, a yoga master, healer, and messianic figure in Jewless Poland. Duncan decides to travel to Poland and find his brother. Together they retrace the family's derailed path, walking among the ghosts of the holocaust, confronting real and imaginary demons.