Set in 1940’s and 50’s Sicily (Paternò), we follow the fortunes of Rosetta from the time she’s twelve (Larissa Volpentesta) and living with her drunken father Leone (Harvey Keitel) – he’d turned to alcohol to forget Rosetta’s mother, Vipera (Elide Melli), after she ran away with a fascist some time ago. Little Rosetta’s fortunes turn for the worse when she’s raped and made pregnant by another former fascist (Giancarlo Giannini), and Leone also dies after falling from his bicycle. She’s sent to live in a convent until the age of twenty one, and her newborn child will cruelly be adopted out by her visiting mother.