Frances Mayes (Diane Lane) is a 35-year-old San Fransisco writer whose perfect life has just taken an unexpected detour. Her recent divorce has left her with terminal writer's block and extremely depressed, and her best friend, Patti (Sandra Oh), is beginning to think she might never recover. "Dr. Patti's" Rx: 10 days in Tuscany. And it's there that, on a whim, Frances purchases a villa named Bramasole - literally, "something that yearns for the sun." The home needs much restoration, but what better place for a new beginning than the home of the Renaissance?

As she flings herself into her new life at the villa in the lush and beautiful Italian countryside, Frances makes new friends among her neighbors, but in the quiet moments, she is fearful that her ambitions for her new life - and a new family may not be realized... until a chance encounter in Rome throws Frances into the arms of an intriguing Portobello antiquitics dealer named Marcello (Raoul Bova). Can this be what she dreamed of? Can love last with Marcello? Will her new life flower under the Tuscan sun?