Beginning in a small village on the Chinese-Russian border in the final days of World War II, White Gardenia tells the story of a mother and daughter separated by war. In a district of the city of Harbin, a haven for white Russian families since Russia's Communist revolution, Alina Kozlova must make a heartbreaking decision if her only child, Anya, is to live.

White Gardenia sweeps across cultures and continents, from the glamorous nightclubs of Shanghai to the harshness of Cold War Soviet Russia in the 1960s, from a desolate island in the Pacific Ocean to a new life in post-war Australia. Both mother and daughter must make sacrifices, but is the price of survival too high? Most importantly of all, will they ever find each other again?