Set in the Valle del Sole, a village nestled in the folds of the Italian Apennines, Lives of the Saints tells the story of young Vittorio Innocente, and his mother, Cristina, whose affair with a blue-eyed stranger abruptly shatters the innocence of Vittorio's childhood. As he tries to piece together the truth of his mother's crime, we discover through Vittorio's eyes the underside of Valle del Sole's pastoral calm, the age-old superstitions and fears, vestiges of a pagan past, beneath the villagers' veneer of Catholicism, and the hypocrisy and malice beneath their self-rightousness.