Amalia is a heroin, a mother and a wife: she retraces the events of her family through three generations. She welcomes their inheritance in a hard struggle to survive between a Country's rural age at its sunset and a working-class Milan in which the war is perceived by apocalyptic aerial bombardments and alarm sirens. Of the war she talks about the anxiety and the horror: she faces losses and mourning with an aching and courageous heart, with the determination to build a future for her and her little daughter and with the certainty of the return of her never forgotten hero, Commander Guido. He, in the meanwhile, is engaged with his patrol in an epic crossing of the Sahara desert through Libya, Tunisia and Algeria, trying to bring his men to safety.