A mother and her teenage daughter go on holiday to Sicily, taking with them an ancient mosaic that the protagonist's grandmother stole decades earlier from an archaeological excavation. While the mother struggles to write a new novel that resists her, she watches with bewilderment as her daughter becomes suddenly obsessed with returning the mosaic. The journey turns into a search for family origins, a passage into a mythical past, and above all, a declaration of love for the imagination as a way of being in the world.