Palu is a somewhat dilapidated Villa Veneta on Lake Garda. The edifice is itself the central character in a story that is joined in recent years by the author and his family who open a B&B within its blood-stained walls. Hundreds of years of history are visited in flashbacks as the family sets about building a business, with little in the way of skills, nothing in the way of experience, and faced with an Italian bureaucracy that has it in for them. Count Fileno Spolverini appears from the outset, murdering a local farmer who had the ill judgement to cross him. A hellish past makes way for paradise under the blue skies of the Veneto. The obstacles are overcome one by one, as modern Italian life presents a precipice of a learning curve for the Anglo-Italian family. Guests come and go, the toast gets regularly burnt, and peace finally comes to a place that has rarely seen it.