Aidan Dunne, a Dublin Latin teacher, always meant to go back to the Italy he visited as a youth. But as the years passed, he concentrated instead on the usual struggles of daily life, like vying for the job of headmaster at his school, keeping memories of Italy in the back corners of his mind. At forty-eight, emotionally distanced from his wife and baffled by his two grown daughters, Aidan Dunne might have given up entirely if it hadn't been for the evening class. His class.

A class called Introduction to Italian. A class where people from every walk of life come together. A class where long-buried hopes come alive again.

The teacher is Signora, a vivacious, eccentric woman with an irrepressible nature and a buried past. Her real name is Nora O'Donoghue, a Dublin native who abandoned Ireland decades before to follow her mysterious lover to Italy. Having defied her parents' Catholic conventions, she ended up in a village where tradition dictated everything - including how a woman could love or grieve.

Now, as she meets Aidan Dunne and the men and women who come together each Tuesday and Thursday night, Signora begins to learn their secrets and their dreams. And slowly she transforms each of their lives. Suddenly Aidan Dunne's last chance, his evening class has become a place of intrigue and revelation.