It's unprecedented, even in the 21st century, for a young Sicilian woman to incur infamy and defy the centuries old mandate, “Family is everything!” Twenty-two-year old Mariella Russo is desperate to flee Sicily, that, while her lifelong home, has become a claustrophobic island. She’s being relentlessly coerced into an engagement with her wealthy college sweetheart from a prominent, powerful, family, and her envious and erratic mother hopes the match will increase her own ignominious social status. To fight for independence and escape entrapment, Mariella flees to San Francisco.

But her bête noire—entrapment—follows Mariella to San Francisco, where everyone wants more from her than she wants to give. Her American roommate, Leslie, turns out to be a gay man rather than the woman she imagined; her employer/lover pressures her to live with him. And, her neurotic mother haunts her, wreaking havoc and embarrassment. An urgent return trip to Sicily puts Mariella to the ultimate challenge of submitting to tradition or choosing a life she wants for herself.