Plot

Under fire for giving a student her copy of a romance novel, Prudence resigns from her teaching position and sails for Italy.

Prudence resigns from her teaching position after being criticized for giving a student her copy of a romance novel. She sails for Italy, takes a job at a small bookstore in Rome, and meets Don, who has just broken up with his girlfriend. Prudence and Don tour Italy together, and romance naturally follows.—Dennis Lewis <dsl@sprynet.com>

To demonstrate the beauty of love to a student to whom love had been made to be an ugly thing, twenty-one year old Prudence Bell, the assistant librarian at Briarcroft College for Women in Connecticut, provides a copy of a banned romance novel to that student. Due to this action, Prudence faces disciplinary action from the school's board. Instead, Prudence, who has never experienced love herself, decides to take her own advice by quitting, and searching for love by traveling by ship from New York to Rome, where she plans to live. There, she begins a romance with Don Porter, an American graduate student, who has been living in Rome for the past year in the same villa where Prudence is staying. Despite doing nothing improper, they keep their romance a secret if only to stop the gossip in the villa, especially about the summer vacation they take together. An obstacle in their romance arises in the form of artist Lyda Kent, Don's former and more experienced girlfriend, with whom he had a year long romance which she ended turbulently. Lyda's return to Rome is accompanied by some personal issues she is facing which she wants Don's help to resolve. Believing she needs to compete on Lyda's level not only for Don but men in general, Prudence seeks advice from her man-wise boss, bookstore owner Daisy Bronson, and Roberto Orlandi, a suave Italian she met on the trans-Atlantic trip, he who wanted to be Prudence's first love.—Huggo

In Connecticut, the twenty-one year-old assistant librarian Prudence Bell is summoned by the board of the Briarcroft College for Women to explain why she had lent the forbidden romance "Lovers Must Learn" to a senior student. She gives a lecture about love to the old and lonely teachers and resigns from her position. Prudence travels to Italy expecting to find independence and the true love. Along her trip, she befriends the experienced and mature Italian Roberto Orlandi and the boring student of Etruscology Albert Stillwell. In Rome, Roberto brings Prudence and Albert to the boarding house of and old Countess. Prudence finds a job in and American bookstore in Rome and she celebrates with the brokenhearted guest of the Countess, Don Porter, whose girlfriend Lyda Kent has just broken up with him and traveled to Switzerland. Prudence and Don spends a holiday touring through Italy and she fall in love with him. But when they return to Rome, Lyda is waiting for Don.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil