What do you do when you fall in love with a man who is still in love with his dead wife? That is the dilemma facing Alice, a young teacher from England who, searching for her Italian roots, goes to live in a small village in Sicily with her grandmother's sister and her husband, helping with their smallholding in the shadow of the menacing Mount Etna.



She becomes a very popular teacher at the local junior school in Catania and is drawn to one of her young pupils, the effervescent Rosie, and her father, Lorenzo, a volcanologist and part of the mountain rescue team on Mount Etna, whose wife died several years previously in a tragic accident. Through Rosie and her father she meets and becomes close to their friends Elizabetta and Antonio and their children, the serious Elena and the mischievous Tommaso.



She falls deeply in love with Lorenzo, but despite her best efforts and those of the incorrigible Rosie and her friend Elizabetta, it seems her love is destined to be unrequited. Instead, she busies herself with her teaching, the daily happenings of the village and learning as much as she can about the traditions and history of this fascinating island with its turbulent history.



Then, when at last he unexpectedly proposes, she refuses him. Has she made the worst mistake of her life or will everything turn out for the best in the end? And can they escape the ever-present danger of the volcano which threatens to overwhelm them all?