Carolina “Lina” Emerson

Carolina “Lina” Emerson is the narrator and main character of this novel. She is an older teenager who opens the novel by telling her reader that she has learned that her mother is dying of pancreatic cancer. After Lina’s mother dies, Lina visits Howard Mercer, a friend of her mother, who lives in Florence, Italy. Lina’s grandmother told Lina that Howard was her father.

In Italy, Lina is given a journal that her mother kept while she was in Italy. Lina learns from this journal that Howard was not her father but that her mother loved him her entire life. Lina's mother returned to America because she feared the biological father of her baby would try to take the child from her. Lina gets in touch with her biological father and learns that he is a jerk, just as her mother described him in...