Anna Minstrel has a good life. Adopted but happy within her loving family, she's got an exciting job - as an editor of a daytime TV show - and a career that's consuming but which leaves room for spin doctor Oliver Manners to woo her. Until her mother dies, and her father remarries, leaving her isolated from his new, dull family. Then into her life comes Sophia, her real mother, who wants Anna to forgive her and come to Rome to meet her real father - now sadly dying. Sophia's family, dizzyingly rich and hopelessly immoral, captivates Anna as they try to make up for all the missing years. Anna feels they too should first forgive her mother, so Anna's new life takes her to Rome and into the family's secrets. She sets out to help Sophia, but with devastating results that change her life and that of those she loves - forever.