All Delia has ever wanted was to be a wife and mother. She lives in Rome in the late 1940s – a city divided between the positive thrust of liberation and the miseries of the war that has just ended – with her husband, Ivano, and their three children. Ivano may be a harsh master; his father even more so. However, Delia has a best friend with whom to share moments of levity, and her daughter is about to get married. She accepts her fate – the good with the bad – until a mysterious letter arrives.