A middle class Italian family finds reason to immigrate to America when Italy is threatened by the Red Brigades' terrorist movement of the 1970s. The family patriarch manages a transfer to the United States, certain of better prospects and of a more secure future for his family, but each of the family members experiences a deeper kind of upheaval, negotiating personal losses and estrangement. A grandmother, a mother, and a granddaughter each discovers the many insidious ways in which war warps and defines life, even at a distance of decades.