A deeply human novel about a lovable group of life and survival artists. What happens when a newspaper heir shows more interest in his Basset than in the fate of his publication? What will become of the unfortunate Ruby, who is single and always searching for the man of her dreams? What about Ed, who gets fired and seeks revenge on the caseworker who is a single mother of three and has no time for love? And what of Kathleen, the editor-in-chief, who is married to a softy but is in love with someone else? And Lloyd, who, lonely as a stray dog, invents a story out of necessity and gets caught? Rachman's wonderfully nuanced, serious-comic social novel about an international daily newspaper and its creators in Rome is compellingly light and a panorama of our times.