At fifteen Blanche Nero watches the electrocution of her Italian immigrant father, punishment for his inexplicable murder of a friend. She resolves to do something significant with her life that will value humane mercy over harsh justice. But she is forever haunted by the mystery of her father's brutal actions.

After a grueling career, Blanche is almost sixty. Her work as a trauma surgeon at Charity Hospital in New Orleans has been abruptly ended by the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. She takes a sabbatical and leases a small flat in Venice, seeking an understanding of her father in the place where he lived his formative years. The startling truth is revealed to her in gradual doses by a fatally ill Italian aristocrat, who asks for only one thing in return.