The Italians called them "Mud Angels, " the young foreigners who came to Florence in 1966 to save the city's treasured art from the Arno's flooded banks. American volunteer Margot Harrington was one of them, finding her niche in the waterlogged library of a Carmelite convent. For within its walls she discovered a priceless Renaissance masterwork: a sensuous volume of sixteen erotic poems and drawings.

Inspired to sample each of the ineffable sixteen pleasures, Margot embarks on the intrigue of a lifetime with a forbidden lover and the contraband volume--a sensual, life-altering journey of loss and rebirth in this exquisite novel of spiritual longing and earthly desire.

"Fascinating entertainment.with a sympathetic heroine, a suspenseful plot, a cast of colorful characters and illuminating meditations on life, art and love."
-- "Chicago Tribune"

"Part mystery, part romance, part guidebook.A lively first novel that communicates the heady peril, as well as the adventure, of Florence after the flood."
-- "The New York Times Book Review"

"Elegantly moving.Everything about the narrator and heroine of this novel is appealing right from the first paragraph."
-- "The New Yorker"