Life is not easy for three international students in a boarding house in Brooklyn, New York. Each is experiencing his or her own challenges, adapting to life in a place filled with unfamiliar sights, sounds, and attitudes. And each tries to find a shred of happiness and security wherever it might be found or created. When David Cassel works up the courage to express his interest to Carmelita Orr, she is already on the verge of despair. She and her infant son have been abandoned by the baby's farther, Tyrone Khadevis. Carmelita is out of school, out of work, out of money, and as she presumes, out of luck. In desperation, she turns to her mother for help. But when David's more mature, sexy, seductive-and married-landlady expresses her own peculiar interest in David, things get even more complicated. He suspects that she has conceived an elaborate plan to get him to succumb to her sensual demands and desires-and she is determined. She will do whatever it takes to keep David away from his studies and from Carmelita, even if she has to lie, cajole, and deceive. Can youth and love ultimately prevail over the malicious intentions of a more mature and privileged individual? Theirs is an intensely emotional and compelling narrative of love, discipline, and determination to succeed in the face of malice, indiscretions, and deceit.