In 1910, a sack of valuable jewelry, including a rare brooch, is stolen from a family in Tropea, Italy. Of the three thieves, only one survives by escaping to a local monastery but not before carefully hiding the valuables. Years go by before he can pass information about the hidden treasure to Ophelia, his childhood sweetheart. She quickly retrieves it. The family learns what has happened and sets out after her. Ophelia and her sister flee for their lives to America.
Fifty years later, a female college student at the University of Notre Dame, who has received the brooch as part of an inheritance, visits the Museum of Art in Chicago where she sees a fifteenth-century Italian painting. The subject is an aristocratic woman who appears to be wearing a brooch. Her brooch! She begins a flurry of investigations to determine how that could possibly be. Eventually, she travels to Italy to try and solve the puzzle and meets a mysterious band of gypsies and discovers answers she could never have dreamed of.