A sack of ancient gold coins and valuable jewelry, including an exquisite, rare brooch is stolen from the Moretti family in Tropea, Italy. The year is 1910. Of the three thieves, only one survives ... and he only because he flees for sanctuary to a local monastery but not before carefully hiding the sack of valuables. Several years go by before he can secretly pass information about the hidden treasure to Ophelia, his childhood sweetheart. She quickly retrieves it. The Moretti family soon learns what has happened and set out after her with vengeful hearts. Ophelia and her younger sister flee for their lives to America. Decades later, a young female college student at the University of Notre Dame, who has received the brooch as part of an inheritance, visits the Museum of Art in Chicago where her attention is drawn to a fifteenth-century Italian painting. The subject is an aristocratic woman who appears to be wearing a brooch. Her brooch! Confused and excited, she begins a flurry of investigations to determine how that could possibly be. Eventually, she travels to Italy and try to solve the puzzle. There she meets a mysterious band of gypsies and discovers answers she could never have dreamed of.

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