Delia (Cortellesi) lives in a working-class community 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 domineering husband, Ivano (Valerio Mastandrea), their three children, and father-in-law.

She rises above the daily challenges of family life; has a best friend with whom to share moments of levity, and dreams for her daughter Marcella to one day have a better life. Delia accepts her fate - the good with the bad - until one day a mysterious letter arrives.