A young woman discovers a cache of heirlooms in an abandoned safe deposit box: bundles of handwritten letters, photographs, expired passports, both American and Italian, and twenty-two leather boxes, each holding a priceless piece of jewelry. Drawn to the mysterious woman in the photographs, Jane digs deeper into the woman's luxurious, golden life and the older, dashing man who occupies her pictures and letters. The details are both glamorous and tragic, with a transcendent romance at the heart of it all that forever changes Jane and those around her.