the story begins in 1962 on a rocky patch of the sundrenched italian coastline a young innkeeper chestdeep in daydreams looks out over the incandescent waters of the ligurian sea and spies an apparition a tall thin woman a vision in white approaching him on a boat she is an actress he soon learns an american starlet and she is dyingand the story begins again today half a world away when an elderly italian man shows up on a movie studios back lotsearching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlierwhat unfolds is a dazzling yet deeply human roller coaster of a novel spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives from the lavish set of cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the edinburgh fringe festival walter introduces us to the tangled lives of a dozen unforgettable characters the starstruck italian innkeeper and his longlost love the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and his idealistic young assistant the army veteran turned fledgling novelist and the rakish richard burton himself whose appetites set the whole story in motionalong with the husbands and wives lovers and dreamers superstars and losers who populate their world in the decades that follow gloriously inventive constantly surprising beautiful ruins is a story of flawed yet fascinating people navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams