Emotional Arithmetic tells the story of three people who formed a life-long bond while housed at a detention camp during World War II that are reunited some 35 years later after being separated from one another. Jakob Bronski, a young Jewish man, took a shine to two youngsters, Melanie and Christopher, while they were interred, by the Nazis, at Drancy, a housing complex on the outskirts of Paris that was used as a detention camp for Jews. Drancy operated as a way station; once there, having your name put on the wrong list meant relocation to a death camp. Their separation inflicts deep emotional wounds that grossly impact their lives in differing ways in the years leading up to their life-altering reunion. Now a beautiful woman in her 50's, Melanie Lansing Winters, wife of David Winters, balances her precarious emotional state with an innate sharp, deprecating wit. Jakob, now a senior citizen, is a heroic dissident and veteran of a Soviet psychiatric hospital. And her childhood friend, Christopher Lewis, a British novelist who has long carried a torch for Melanie, is haunted by the eternal question survivors ask themselves - "Why was I saved?" Melanie invites Jakob to stay with her at her home in Canada. Christopher accompanies Jakob there. With Melanie's marriage to David in shambles due to his compulsive infidelity, the pair's presence in the Winters' home revitalizes Melanie, but arouses unexpected reserves of jealousy in David, who is estranged from his and Melanie's grown son, Benjamin, a father himself to a young son, Timmy. On a balmy summer evening, the past explodes into the present in an unexpected and tender love story and its fatal consequences. The 'emotional arithmetic' of the title refers to the characters' struggle to face the past and move on.