A young man survives a terrorist attack that took place on the 4th of August 1974 at the railway station of Bologna, where he witnesses his own father dying just in front of his eyes.
Stigmatised by his memories and his father's loss, he will cut himself off in the lonely world of writing, which was his childhood dream, without achieving and author's sought - after success as his readership does not receive his works very well.
Twenty years later, a letter comes through from a mysterious woman that invites him to a gallery, where he comes up against the painting The House of Seagulls.
From then on, there begins an extensive search that will have him confront his past, a past related to the financial and moral collapse of the late formerly powerful Sordi family in Rome during the years of the Cold War (1975).
Nevertheless, the death of their daughter is shrouded in mystery as she is alleged to have committed suicide by jumping off a lighthouse on the island of Ponza. But is this the truth? With the help of Nora Terentino, a police officer in Rome's Homicide Department, he will try to reveal the truth, disclosing parts of the darkest historical facts of Italy. Power abuse, political corruption, terrorism, and freemasonry will pull the strings of history, bringing in a tour de force both the heroes and the reader face to face with death, loyalty, suffering of loss, writing obsession, and the power of real love. All this against the backdrop of majestic Rome.