A mystery painting. A stolen Stradivarius. Lovers who meet. Or almost meet. Or never do. Lisa is a first-time mother, living a discreet life in Toronto's Annex neighbourhood. As the new millennium dawns, she travels with her young family to bustling Manhattan. There she discovers a peculiar painting, once the property of a famous violinist, named Erica Morini. Fascinated by the immodestly clad woman depicted in the painting, Lisa embarks on a quest to discover the identity of the painting's subject and the artist who painted her. As she probes deeper into the lives of the painter and violinist, Lisa finds herself engulfed in the artistic explosion of the 1920's and the crazed interactions of the so-called "lost generation" of writers, painters and photographers who battled to make sense of their lives in the aftermath of the First World War. Her quest brings her to examine notions of failure and success, unrequited and forbidden love, as well as life and death, marriage and motherhood, feminism and the shame of Canada's colonial past.