Plot summary

In Connecticut, the twenty-one year-old assistant librarian Prudence Bell is summoned by the board of the Briarcroft College for Women to explain why she had lent the forbidden romance "Lovers Must Learn" to a senior student. She gives a lecture about love to the old and lonely teachers and resigns from her position. Prudence travels to Italy expecting to find independence and the true love. Along her trip, she befriends the experienced and mature Italian Roberto Orlandi and the boring student of Etruscology Albert Stillwell. In Rome, Roberto brings Prudence and Albert to the boarding house of and old Countess. Prudence finds a job in and American bookstore in Rome and she celebrates with the brokenhearted guest of the Countess, Don Porter, whose girlfriend Lyda Kent has just broken up with him and traveled to Switzerland. Prudence and Don spends a holiday touring through Italy and she fall in love with him. But when they return to Rome, Lyda is waiting for Don.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil