A priest and a Holocaust survivor find their perspectives and senses of identity reshaped by their shared investigation into the classic romance between discredited religious scholar Peter Abelard and his intellectual paramour, Héloïse.

After Father Michael Kavanagh sees a friend from his seminary days at the altar of his humble Inwood community parish, he wanders into the medieval haven of The Cloisters. In conversation with museum guide Rachel Vedette, he finds she retreated to the quiet of The Cloisters after her harrowing experience as a Jewish woman in France during the Holocaust. She shares with Kavanagh her late father's greatest intellectual work: a study demonstrating the relationship between the famously discredited monk Peter Abelard and Jewish scholars-- and the romance between Abelard and his intellectual equal Héloïse.