Maaijke, born in 1815, becomes an infectiously likeable, insatiably curious, physically rambunctious, blond Dutch farmer's daughter with an incredible imagination.
Whenever bored, or wishing to be someplace else, she imagines herself to that place and time. In these travels, she meets Beatrix Potter, Gustave Eiffel and others but of course, only in her imagination, so she is unable to interact with them.
But when she visits her own village of Spackenburg in the 1970's, the tour guide docents, wearing costumes identical to her own dress, mistake her for one of them and impress her into docent service.
As a suddenly interactive young woman of 18 years, she finds she is able to stay only as long as her intense concentration can sustain her imagination, after which she is suddenly brought back to her home and her time.
In one of these journeys, she meets Peter, a recently discharged US Navy pilot fresh from the Viet Nam war and after a torrid few days together, she disappears.
Peter has no idea that she is from a different century and is emotionally crushed by her loss.
His emotional pain gradually eases during medical school and into his surgical residency, when he finds her again in the small village of Spackenburg. She tells him they have a son, and just as suddenly as before, she again disappears leaving him a letter announcing that she is again carrying his child.
For the second time, his pain of losing her slowly subsides. helped by Celia whom he meets, falls in love with, and marries. Together they have three children and share a joy-filled marriage until two complications arise: Maaijke returns, and Peter discovers that Maaijke shares the same name as his great-great grandmother. More worrisome is that her alleged children share the same names as Peter's great grandfather and his brother, and that existing DNA evidence from hair in a locket Maaijke gave him suggests the impossible: a direct genetic connection between them.