When book conservator Margo Harrington travels to Florence to aid in restoring the treasures damaged in the flooding of the Arno in 1966, she is entrusted with a rare book that its owner, the abbess of a convent, hopes to sell without the bishop's knowledge. This exquisite novel unfolds a tale of spiritual longing and earthly desire.

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. 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 daring story of spiritual longing and earthly desire.