The story is set in a small hilltop town, Montelorenzo in Maremma, southern Tuscany. Franco is a popular Moto Guzzi driving bachelor, whose family has a long history of left-wing activism. Alessandro, the owner of a successful campsite, is from another local landowning family, who believes that Montelorenzo deserves to have its own library and nominates Franco to be its first librarian. While on a lunchtime break in a bar next to a railway station, Franco meets Nadja, a spirited but anxious person. Fausto, a bon viveur, is invited by Franco to be his best man and jokes that the main difference between them is that whilst he himself has no hope, Franco does. This is quite true, for Nadja becomes, both literally and metaphorically, Franco’s Hope, until the Three Fates of Greek mythology intervene.
