After Melina visits Italy with two friends and then meets and falls in love with a college professor at a local college where one of her friends’ uncles is president, she is not at all looking forward to returning to her home, a dusty, isolated hole in the desert. Impoverished and with little hope for a bright future, she is surprised when Ariella and her half-sister Nara visit her in the U.S. and then bring her back to Italy to live with Ari.

Melina and Ari make a home together and life goes on peacefully, but not without some adventures along the way, and eventually, things fall apart and Ari is murdered.

Melina then goes to live with her mother-in-law, Lucia, who has always adored her, all the while someone grows dangerously obsessed with her as they learn of her life through her online journal