Giovanna, a strong-willed Italian beauty, comes from a dirt-poor family.She meets Lorenzo, a member of a wealthy, upper-class family. She wants to marry him and escape her poverty; he wants sex. The two begin a fiery relationship where the desires of each can be satisfied. When his mother discovers her son's forbidden love, she forces him to end the relationship with the low-class illiterate puttana. More disgrace follows Giovanna when her subsequent engagement to a local laborer is broken. To compound her pain, a cholera epidemic takes her parents' lives soon after the breakup. With nothing left in Italy,Giovanna sets out for America to marry a man she never met, in a marriage arranged on her father's deathbed. Her pint-sized fiancé, Arturo is a wealthy contractor who likes to abuse women, but Giovanna refuses to be dishonored. She flees her nightmarish fiancé and travels to Massachusetts, even though she has no money and speaks no English. Once there, she meets Domenico, a 21-year-old immigrant from Italy. They begin a life together, but it is soon clouded by betrayal and doubt. A heavenly intervention suddenly changes things for the better…or so they think.