In this alternative history novel, the Mona Lisa is lost in a maritime disaster. It's Christmas 1962. A French ocean liner, transporting the Mona Lisa for an American tour, sinks. The painting is on personal loan to the Kennedys. President Kennedy enlists an old war buddy, David "Buzz" Buckley, to dive the wreck and recover Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece. This stylish, dark-fantasy tribute to America's Camelot and the golden age of ocean liners introduces us to passengers aboard the doomed vessel: Simone Brachy, on a mission to reconcile in Manhattan with her famous existentialist husband; Jacqueline Brachy, Simone's precocious teenage daughter and aspiring novelist; and Edward Fogarty, a journalist tasked with accompanying the Mona Lisa on its ill-fated journey.