In 1935, in sleepy Cannero on Lake Maggiore, Paola and her daughter Eva - Little Spark - ply a discreet living embroidering for rich tourists. Eva pines for the glamour of the Milan they abruptly left. She dreams of escape - to Hollywood to become a make-up artist, and from the inevitability of being married to a suitable local boy. Instead she is obliged to help the padre; slathering face paint on bodies from the lake. When an Englishman appears on her slab a sole strange mourner lurks in the shadows.

Eva turns for help to her charismatic new acquaintance, the globetrotting Agatha Christie-toting, puzzle-solving independent-spirited Amelia, and finds herself launched on a perilous journey that begins with her first trip across a lake she has hitherto feared and takes her into the dark heart of Mussolini's brutal regime.

Little Spark will find that she is an extraordinary woman in extraordinary times.