What happens when a daughter's dream and a mother's sordid past collide? New York, 1910. Seventeen-year-old Sylvie and her French-immigrant mother Justine eke out a living doing piecework in a tenement on the Lower East Side, while Sylvie attends school so that she can escape their life of poverty by becoming a teacher. At least, that's what her mother believes should happen. Sylvie, though, has a different dream...