Highgate, London, 1824. Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a washed-up opium
addict, estranged from his friends and from his neglected wife. His grip
on reality is starting to slip; his past and present mingle in
laudanum-induced dreams.
In a Cambridge college library, Scrivener, a bullied undergraduate,
finds a strange annotation in a book of Coleridge's poems. Intrigued by
this mystery marginalia and captivated by Romantic poetry, he resolves
to become a poet himself, with Coleridge as his guiding light.
Across the sea, Samuele, a young Sicilian, discovers that his mother
once had a liaison with Coleridge. He sets out for England to learn all
he can about the man who may be his father.
It isn't long before Samuele and Scrivener cross paths--but will their
journeys take them to the real Samuel Taylor Coleridge?