The world was changing. A war raged in Europe and soon the Spanish flu would ravage the planet, ultimately killing 50 million, including 650,000 Americans. People around the world were hungry; many sought new lives and new beginnings as the Great Migration continued. It is a planet in turmoil. Even given world events, the Tomaso family is happy and content, living just outside Palermo on a sweet-smelling citrus farm in the rolling hills of Sicily. The clan had farmed the area for two centuries but now, with taxes out of control, an incompetent government and crime rampant, their happiness was shattered. They realized that to survive, the family is forced to split. The three brothers must leave the land and the people they love and immigrate to America. In a heart-breaking sequence of events, grandparents say good bye to their grandchildren, knowing they will likely never see them again. Reluctantly, sadly, tragically, the brothers board a ship bound for America. On a freezing Christmas Eve, they arrive in their new home: a fourth floor apartment in a tenement building on Cambridge Street in Chicago's Little Sicily. The squalid neighborhood is also known as Little Hell, a well-deserved nickname hung on the district by the newspapers. The family quickly learns that they are not welcome or wanted in their new homeland. They are now in the lower class with no money, no language skills and with little opportunity. To make matters even worse, crooked politicians, dirty cops and violent gangsters run the streets and the businesses here, just like at home. Paolo, the oldest, gets a job as a laborer in the Halsted Street slaughter house, where he does backbreaking work twelve hours a day, six days a week for just enough money to pay the rent and put food on the table. His wife, Gianna, takes care of their two kids, Luca and Isabella. The youngest of the brothers, the always sweet and smiling Leonardo, known affectionately as Nardo, finds work as a busboy and dishwasher. Middle brother Renzo, more of a con-man and never much of a worker back in Sicily, seeks more of an easy path. Iron-fisted crime boss Don Malo Tancredi and his five brothers run Little Sicily. In the beginning, as small operators, they forced local merchants to pay protection, ran gambling dens, operated two dozen brothels and stole whatever and whenever they could. However, in 1920, Prohibition makes the manufacture or distribution of drinking alcohol illegal and creates a business opportunity that makes the brothers wealthy, as it does for other gangs in Chicago and around the country. Life moves along and years roll by unnoticed. Paolo and Gianna add daughters Rosa, Sofia and finally Katerina to the family. Nardo meets and falls madly in love with Francesca. Renzo and his pal Mario find a way to make a lot of money quickly, but it's foolhardy, at best. Through a series of unfortunate events, the brothers incur the terrible and vicious wrath of crime boss Malo Tancredi, who decides that Paolo should be killed as an example of his power and absolute control of the neighborhood. "These are my streets," Tancredi says. "MINE AND I WANT THAT PEASANT DEAD " He sends his three murderers, Gazzo, Lupo and Santo, to Cambridge Street to kill Paolo in full public view. An angry mob forms to take on the hitmen but they are held at bay by a machine gun wielding Santo. Chicago police commander Johnson, who has been on Tancredi's payroll for years, arrives to move the killing along. He orders Gazzo, "I don't care if you have to go up there and drag him out. Get it done "All avenues of escape are closed. There is no help. Paolo and Gianna stand alone against Tancredi's violent killers, who wait outside to slaughter the young farmer. All hope seems lost for the couple who must somehow survive knowing that their actions will determine the fate and futures of their five children.