A gripping story about a woman who purposefully loses herself in the chaos of the quake and fire to elude the husband who desperately seeks to find her.

Sara Gilardi, the spoiled daughter of a wealthy winemaker, paints, draws, sings some opera, but has yet to find her artistic calling. Her husband Lorenzo, an Italian immigrant and shopkeeper, wishes she'd just cook him dinner and tidy the house. To help save their failing marriage, Lorenzo splurges on tickets to see the tenor Enrico Caruso in San Francisco, south of their home in Healdsburg. After the opera, an argument between the couple turns violent and Sara goes to Caruso in his hotel room. She's with him in bed when the earthquake strikes the next morning.

Lorenzo, determined not to return home without his wife, embarks on a desperate search. After Sara is thrown out by Caruso's valet, she decides to leave her marriage and flees the burning heart of the city with strangers. As Lorenzo's search for Sara intensifies, they each encounter a host of San Francisco characters, along with those inspired by real-life historical figures, including the photographer Arnold Genthe, General George Funston, and an eccentric Emperor Norton lookalike. By the time Sara and Lorenzo finally meet again, each has been so irrevocably changed, they barely recognize one another.