Holly Hewitt has an unexpected offer to visit the duchy of St. Uguzo for a few days as a guest of one of its citizens, now an internationally known opera singer. Almost immediately with her arrival things begin to fall apart. While she is befriended and supported by a few of St. Uguzo's citizens, she seems to have arrived at a time of several tragic events for the Duchy. Since the duchy is famous for its cheese, and that cheese is its major source of income, a serious problem with cheese production threatens the duchy's survival. And since the duchy is small, these events affect almost everyone, including Holly. Perhaps it's the effect of an unusual energy center in the Duchy that stimulates Holly's latent intuition and forces her to find inner resources and courage she didn't know she had. She's buoyed by the hope of an unexpected romantic interest, but also has to face the prospect that her hopes for her career and her love life just may not work out. Both her future and that of the duchy seem very much in doubt and there seems an impossibly slim chance to save it all from catastrophe.