It is highly autobiographical in nature, and centers on a young Russian landowner, Dimitry Sanin, who falls deliriously in love for the first time while visiting the German city of Frankfurt.

Although Fathers and Sons remains Turgenev's most famous novel, Torrents of Spring is significant in its revealing of the author's life, thoughts, and most intimate emotions.

According to Turgenev's biographer Leonard Schapiro, the character of Gemma Roselli was inspired by an incident which took place while the future novelist was visiting Frankfurt in 1840.

[3]: 2–7, 16–17 The second model is believed to have been Eleonora Petersen, the German first wife of the poet Fyodor Tyutchev, with whom Turgenev "conceived some kind of romantic attachment" during his 1838 voyage from St. Petersburg to Lübeck.

"[3]: 251 In response to a letter, criticizing the novel, from the niece of Gustave Flaubert, Turgenev expressed agreement that the second half of the novel, "was not very necessary", but explained, "I allowed myself to be carried away by memories.

It first saw publication in the January 1872 edition of the Vestnik Evropy (Herald of Europe), the major liberal magazine of late nineteenth century Russia.

[6] The story opens with a middle-aged Dmitry Sanin rummaging through the papers in his study when he comes across a small cross set with garnets, which sends his thoughts back thirty years to 1840.

In the summer of 1840, a twenty-two-year-old Sanin, arrives in Frankfurt en route home to Russia from Italy at the culmination of a European tour.

During his one-day layover he visits a confectioner's shop where he is rushed upon by a beautiful young woman who emerges frantic from the back room.

These include the matriarch, Leonora (or Lenore) Roselli, her daughter Gemma, her son Emilio (or Emile), and the family friend Pantaleone, a rather irascible old man and retired opera singer.

Back in Frankfurt, Sanin soon learns from a distraught Frau Lenore that Gemma has cancelled her engagement to Klaus for no apparent reason than that he did not defend her honor sufficiently at the inn.

So the next day Sanin spends with a delighted Emilio in the countryside and that evening returns to his rooms to find a note from Gemma asking him to meet her in a quiet public garden of Frankfurt at seven the next morning.

Sanin decides he must sell his small estate near Tula in Russia in order to pay for his planned nuptials and settling down with Gemma.

By chance, he meets in the street the next day an old schoolmate of his, Hippolyte Sidorovich Polozov, who has come to Frankfurt from nearby Wiesbaden to do some shopping for his wealthy wife, Maria Nikolaevna.

This seems to confirm Sanin's notion that a lucky star follows lovers, for Maria is from the same region near Tula as himself, and her wealth might make her a likely prospect to buy his estate, thus saving him a journey home to Russia.

In the days that follow, and seemingly against his own will and inclination, Sanin finds himself increasingly obsessed by the curious Maria Nikolaevna as she intrudes herself upon his thoughts.

Before parting company for the evening Dmitry agrees to go riding with Maria the following day, in what he thinks will be their last meeting before he returns to Frankfurt and she proceeds to Paris.

The next morning the pair heads off on their ride in the countryside accompanied only by a single groom, whom Maria soon dispatches to a local inn to wile away the afternoon, leaving her and Sanin to themselves.

Sanin is again in his study, contemplating the garnet cross (previously revealed to have belonged to Gemma); and Sanin is again eaten with remorse, and recalls all the bitter and shameful memories he felt after the events of Wiesbaden, such as how he sent a tearful letter to Gemma that went unanswered, how he sent a groom of the Polozovs to fetch his things in Frankfurt, and even how the elderly Pantaleone, accompanied by Emilio, came to Wiesbaden to curse him.

Now in his fifties, he decides to return to Frankfurt to track down his old love but once there finds no trace of the former Roselli home nor anyone who has even heard of them, though he does discover that Karl Klüber though initially very successful eventually went bankrupt and died in prison.

Eventually she does write and forgives him, while telling him about the lives of her family (she now has five children) and wishing him happiness, while also expressing the joy it would give her to see him again, though she doesn't think it likely.

Dmitry Pavlovich Sanin – a young Russian nobleman of property and almost without family ties who is traveling in Europe after coming upon a modest inheritance and before taking up an official position in Russia Gemma Roselli – the beautiful daughter of Leonora Roselli who was born and raised in Germany though still maintains her "clear, southern nature"; at the novel's outset she is engaged to Karl Klüber Pantaleone Cippatola – an old man and former opera singer and a regular at the Roselli household, where he occupies a position somewhere between family friend and servant; in spite of his prolonged residence in Germany, he speaks little German Emilio Roselli, or Emil – younger, and only, brother of Gemma; of weak constitution, he has romantic aspirations for the theatre but his mother wishes him to be set up as a merchant Leonora Roselli, or Frau Lenore – matriarch of the Roselli household; originally from Parma, she is the widow of Giovanni Battista Roselli, an Italian from Vicenza, who settled in Frankfurt as a confectioner Giovanni Battista Roselli – the now deceased founder of Roselli's Confectionary Shop who came – or fled – to Frankfurt from his native Italy (presumably due to his involvement in revolutionary activity) some twenty-five years before the main events of the story take place; upon his death he left behind a widow, one daughter, and one son Karl Klüber – the young German fiancé of Gemma when the novel begins; "decorous, dignified, and affable," he nevertheless has the workaday air of an up-and-coming merchant Baron von Dönhof – a German officer who fights a duel with Sanin early in the novel and then crosses paths again with Sanin in Wiesbaden Herr Second Lieutenant von Richter – fellow officer of von Dönhof and his second in the duel with Sanin Hippolyte Sidorovich Polozov – an old schoolmate of Sanin's and husband of Maria Nikolaevnka Polozov; a phlegmatic and rather dull figure with a large appetite who is well-kept by his wife's income and glad to do his wife's bidding if only to be left alone Maria Nikolaevna Polozova – wealthy wife of Hippolyte Sydorovych Polozov; a femme fatale who sets out to seduce Sanin A film based on the novel, written and directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, was released in 1989.