After decades as a real estate broker specializing in old religious properties, 52-year-old Claire is looking for something new. And then, on the eve of her 30th college reunion, a call comes from Rome. It’s from a struggling convent facing a precipitous end, and Claire isn’t so sure she can help out. But once in Rome, she finds a group of funny, fearless nuns in a gorgeous, if crumbling, villa. It leads her unexpectedly to wonder: maybe she should stay in Rome. In the convent. Forever. Her college roommate and business partner has thoughts. So does Claire’s daughter. And so does Marcus, a once-buzzy actor, who’s still as devastatingly handsome as he was when he first fell for Claire at 18. He’s come and gone from Claire’s life since college but reappears in Rome just as she’s about to decide what’s next.

When eccentric novelist Robert Eady abruptly vanishes, he leaves behind his wife, Leah, their daughters, and, hidden in an unexpected spot, plane tickets to Paris. Hoping to uncover clues --- and her husband --- Leah sets off for France with her girls. Upon their arrival, she discovers an unfinished manuscript, one Robert had been writing without her knowledge…and that he had set in Paris. The Eady women follow the path of the manuscript to a small, floundering English-language bookstore whose weary proprietor is eager to sell. But a series of startling discoveries forces Leah to consider that she may not be ready for what solving this mystery might do to her family --- and the Paris she thought she knew.