Four strangers are summonded to the Villa Dante, a beautifl but now abandoned house above the Ligurian coast. Each has been named in the will of the intriguing Beatrice Malaspina; not one of them knows who she is. Delia, an opera singer; George, an atom scientist from Cambridge; Marjorie, a detective novelist; and Lucius, a Boston banker, come to Italy, only to find that the mystery deepens.

Spring flowers into the joy of an Italian summer, and the Villa Dante, with its frescoes and once-magnificent gardens, comes back to life. As water flows again through the cascades and fountains, the four visit the mediaeval tower close to the house, and find themselves face to face with their troubled pasts in a way they never could have foreseen.

The villa works its magic and slowly they are changed, as the sorrow of their wartime experiences grow into the possibilty of hope. Now they can receive their unexpected inheritance and, as devastating secrets are finally revealed, the even greater gift of a new life.