In 1962, a young innkeeper in Italy spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman approaching him on a boat. He soon learns that she’s an American actress --- and she’s dying. And the story begins again today, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot, searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert K. Massie brings us the extraordinary story of an obscure young German princess who traveled to Russia at 14 and rose to become one of the most remarkable, powerful and captivating women in history.