Aracy de Carvalho crossed the Atlantic between Brazil and Germany, swapping São Paulo for Hamburg. Margarethe Levy took the reverse route, leaving Germany behind as she set off for Brazil and made São Paulo her new home. Aracy and Margarethe are the two protagonists of this book. As the products of completely different socio-cultural universes, they probably would never have met, never mind become friends.

However, a very particular historical context brought Margarethe, like many other Jews, to the Hamburg Brazilian Consulate to request a visa for Brazil. There, she met Aracy, who worked as Head of the Passport Section. This particular historical context is twofold: in Germany, the first years of the Third Reich (1933-1939) were marked by a gradual escalation in the persecution of Jews; in Brazil, the Vargas Era (1930-1945) introduced restrictive immigration legislation.

This book also follows, for about 50 years, the lives and the displacement of a group of refugees forcibly shuffled between Germany and Brazil, looking closely at their actions. Beyond the figure of Aracy, A Fair Woman paints a collective portrait of this group taken in a larger history, made of meetings and missed opportunities, as well as successes, failures and displacements.