Publisher's Synopsis
Thirty-two-year-old Candida Darroway, an Italian professor at Altamonte, a small college near San Francisco, searches for her identity. Still single, but in a relationship, she knows she needs to get her personal life in gear.
She's offered an opportunity she can't pass up. The college is sponsoring a fund-raising, three-week luxury art tour to Italy, the equivalent of traveling for gastronomy and Renaissance art. Her colleague, Professor Rob Ferrell, would act as the art history leader and Candida would be the cultural leader. For some reason, she feels this trip will prove her own Renaissance.
So begins a tour filled with misfits, art analysis, and gourmet cuisine, where Candida becomes Ferrell's scapegoat for what goes wrong. The group-a mixed bag-favors Ferrell's leadership, ostracizing Candida. She yearns for Professor Wes Spotswood, a man twenty-one years her senior, with whom she is having a torrid affair. During the trip, medieval Italy pulses under Renaissance skin, drunkards reform, and old flames rekindle.
In the end, Altamonte's tour offers more than an appreciation of art and history. Candida discovers powers of judgment and social interaction. Other destinations have opened up grander vistas to her than even her beloved Italian Renaissance offered.
