Rome, 1221. After the death of Dominic Guzman, founder of the Dominican order, the list containing the names of three unknown persons, together with the evidence given for Dominic's canonization, was securely hidden, and a copy, sealed in an icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary, was subsequently secretly taken to New France. The novel traces the life paths of two young men of the 19th century - an ambitious and self-confident Genoese and a talented artist from a rural parish in Lower Canada - who are thrown by fatal circumstances across three continents, where their very different destinies intertwine in a penal colony in New South Wales, Australia , and their fate is decided through luck, ambition and faith. A series of mysterious incidents will elevate one of them and bring down the other as the secret of Madonna's list is revealed.