THE INVITATION ROME 1953: Hal, an itinerant journalist flailing in the postwar darkness, has come to the Eternal City to seek an absolution for the thing that haunts him. One evening he meets a mysterious woman named Stella at a glamorous soiree. They escape the crowded party and imagine a different life together, even if it’s just for a night. When Stella vanishes all to quickly, Hal is certain their paths won’t cross again. A year later, Hal receives an invitation he cannot refuse- an Italian contessa asks him to report from her yacht, filled with the cast and crew of a movie she has produced, as it skims along the Italian coast towards the Cannes film festival. Of all luminaries aboard, only one holds Hal in thrall: Stella. The invitation is a sultry love story about the ways in which the secrets of the past stay with us-no matter how much we try to escape them.
