The dream of a better life for himself and his family drives Luca Tonetta to the American Promised Land with his wife Maria and their three children. But the new Promised Land is nothing like what Maria had imagined. Forced to live in a roach-infested tenement house in the seedy section of Brooklyn, Maria faces hardships, prejudice, and slanderous assaults as she struggles to reconcile a life torn between two worlds. When her husband Luca is accused of a crime he did not commit, Maria learns that a dream must first die before it can live.