After a prestigious education on Manhattan's Upper East Side and a degree from the Yale School of Architecture, Margherita tries to find her place in various cities, from her own metropolis of New York to the hills of San Francisco. It is not until Margherita accepts a new position in Italy that things finally fall into place. In Milan, she has a fabulous job, new friends, a sense of belonging, and the interesting, adventurous lifestyle she had long aspired to. Charming European men who wine, dine, and tempt her add to the fun, and she finally feels the blissful freedom she's been seeking.

When a fateful event forces Margherita to suddenly abandon the life she built in Italy and return to Manhattan, she finds herself navigating yet another transition, and this one is not pointing to a brighter future. With a stripped-down spirit and a cunning boss, she is once again faced with a feeling of loss and loneliness, and she enters into a secret, unruly affair that threatens to peel away her protective layers. The sense of belonging she felt in Italy disappears, and she is forced to reinvent her life with her less than perfect reality.

Italian Lessons explores the landscape of the mid-twenties: the torturous state of out-of-sync lust and love, the guilt of establishing yourself away from family, the quest for fulfillment in work and in friendships, and the yearning to understand where you feel most yourself, with whom, and why. With wit, laughter, and tears, Margherita learns to reconcile her journey between two very different cultures, all the while discovering the difference between mistakes worth making and those which are irreversible.