This intense and spellbinding family saga begins in Messina, in 1904, at the Andaloro house. On the day of her engagement Costanza discovers that her father has committed suicide. Destroyed by her pain, she is sent by her family to New York where she works in a tailor shop in Little Italy, and where the ambitious musician Pietro Malara courts her without success. Four years later, in 1908, the news of the Messina earthquake reaches New York, and Costanza learns that no one in her family has survived. Oppressed by a sense of guilt that drives her to deny herself any form of happiness, she agrees to marry Pietro and follows him to Naples.

The final phase of the novel takes place in Naples, in 2012. Lucilla arrives at the Rione Sanità on the trail of her great-grandmother, Costanza Andaloro, whose existence she discovered via an old letter recently come to light. By reading Costanza’s diary and through the stories of the elderly Zina, Lucilla will be able to reconstruct the complex figure of her great-grandmother who was forced to make painful yet vital choices in span of her Neapolitan life. It was there that she singlehandedly raised her daughter, Rosa, the future grandmother of Lucilla. It was there that Costanza became the woman who lived in cities by the sea. Lucilla will complete the circle of her life in music as well, as the ribbons of creativity that weave through her family are revealed.