A pregnant woman inherits a house from her aunt and moves there with her girlfriend. Their unborn child becomes threatened by an old karmic debt linked to the town's dark past.

In 1957, lawyer James B. Donovan is recruited from his prestigious law firm to defend accused Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. It's an unenviable task in many respects. Donovan hasn't practiced criminal law since he was a prosecutor at the Nuremburg trials after World War II. Also, the strong anti-Communist mood at the time makes him a target from who think Abel should just be executed. Abel is convicted but Donovan convinces the judge to sentence him to prison, rather than execute him, as they may at some point in the future want to swap him for an American spy the Soviets might have in custody. Just such a scenario comes into play when in 1960 U-2 spy pilot Francis Gary Powers is shot down over Soviet territory and taken prisoner. Donovan is again recruited to act as the intermediary and negotiate swapping Able for the American requiring him to travel to East Berlin crossing the newly built Berlin Wall.

A young couple living in a Connecticut suburb during the mid-1950s struggle to come to terms with their personal problems while trying to raise their two children.

In the cold war, a lawyer, James B. Donovan recruited by the CIA and involved in an intense negotiation mission to release and exchange a CIA U-2 spy-plane pilot, Francis G. Powers that was arrested alive after his plane was shot down by the Soviet Union during a mission- with a KGB intelligence officer, Rudolf Abel who was arrested for espionage in the US.