One summer's day in 1851, a seventeen-year-old Scottish girl, on holiday with her family in the German Rhineland, sets off with her sketchbook, and disappears - never to be seen again.

Eleven years later, a ruined turret near to the Inn where Idilia and her parents had been staying is dismantled by local builders. Among the rubble, they come across the bones of a young girl and then, when the coping of the tower wall is removed, a small, gilt-edged diary, wedged in a gap in the mortar. Its tattered pages finally unravel the mystery of Idilia's disappearance - the story of an illicit love affair which, through a cruel twist of fate, had ended in tragedy.

Poignant and enchanting, The Diary of Miss Idilia is an extraordinary true story which, published for the first time here in its original form, is destined to become a classic.