"Where Angels Fear to Tread" is a novel by E.M. (Edward Morgan) Forster. It was published in 1905.
The story is a conflict between cultures, and English town of Sawston where the Herriton family lives, and Monteriano, an Italian place. It starts with Lilia Herriton, a widow in her early thirties. She is urged to spend a year in Italy by her brother-in-law, Philip, who believes that the experience will purify and ennoble her. Accompanying a younger neighbour, Caroline Abbott, Lilia departs. All goes well until news reaches the Herritons in Sawston that she intends to marry again.
Mrs Herriton, her mother-in-law and a domineering high-and-mighty social snob, dispatches Philip to prevent the catastrophe but he arrives too late. On reaching Monteriano, he discovers that Lilia has already married Gino Carella who is several years her junior and a son of a dentist. Philip returns to England with Caroline Abbott, who is actually guilt-ridden over her part in Lilia's downfall.
The marriage of Lilia to Gino fails and she dies in childbirth. Mrs Herriton and her equally unsavoury daughter, Harriet, eventually decide to retrieve the baby from its father. Philip is again sent to mediate, this time with Harriet, and Caroline Abbott, who is determined to adopt the child herself. All three meet in Monteriano. By the way, in Monteriano, the author E.M. Forster supplies a delightfully comic description of Monteriano surrounding a performance of the tragic opera "Lucia di Lammermoor." Inevitably, Philip and Caroline begin to succumb to the charms of Italy.
Gino proves to be a devoted father and more or less abandoned, Philip abandons the plan of why they are there in the first place. Harriet refuses to admit defeat and attempts to steal the baby. The carriage in which she, Philip and the baby are travelling in gets involved in a collision. It overturns and the baby is killed. Gino assaults Philip. Eventually, Philip, Harriet and Caroline return home. On the journey Philip discovers that he has fallen in love with Caroline, but Caroline has fallen in love with Gino.
Caroline's future is uncertain whether she'll marry or not. In the novel, she is the symbolic link or meeting place between the two worlds, that of the English conventional middle-class Herritons, and the Italian Gino.