Content Warning: These Chapter Summaries & Analyses discuss the novel’s depiction of abuses of power and grooming behavior between a university professor and his student. They also describe discussions of rape in Roman mythology, which feature in the novel.

Carolina (“Lina”) Emerson, in her sophomore year of high school in Seattle, struggles to help her mother, Hadley, adjust to a grim cancer prognosis. The pancreatic cancer has spread and is now inoperable. Coming back from a doctor’s appointment, Hadley tells her daughter out of the blue that when she was Lina’s age, she spent time in Florence, Italy, studying photography. Over the next several weeks, as the cancer spreads, Hadley tells Lina she wants her to go to Italy and meet a wonderful man she knew then named Howard Mercer. She tells Lina, “You’ll really love him” (5). Lina is confused, but her mother encourages her to think about spending time with Howard in Florence after she is gone.

In the late spring, just weeks after her mother dies, Lina’s grandmother tells Lina that Howard Mercer is, in fact, her father and that he is looking forward to meeting her after all this time. Emotionally upset over losing her mother, Lina agrees to stay in Florence only for the summer.