When Valerie Sherwood Brooks' banker father announces he’s taking the family to Pompeii, Italy to look into an investment opportunity, the romantic young woman, who yearns for adventure, is overjoyed. But Valerie finds herself unprepared when an earthquake shatters the old city, hurling her back in time to 79 A.D. where she’s thrust into a world of intrigue and danger in the grand home of the darkly handsome, Christos Marcellus. As Valerie tries to keep her wits about her, she is torn between her growing and complicated feelings for Christos and the impending doom of the coming eruption of Vesuvius—knowing it will bring certain death and destruction.