Rose Kirkland, a childless jewelry designer living in Santa Monica, California, is urged by her husband Matthew, to find a surrogate mother to bear their child. Faced with this decision and compelled by a medieval woman's voice obsessively invading her reality, she leaves home to find the answers. Her quest takes her to Oxford, England, and then to Vieste, her father's birthplace in southern Italy. Finally she ventures to Pirou Castle in Normandy, where Rose discovers a link to her own existence, as past and present meet in a time-travel odyssey of desire and self-discovery.