What happens when a daughter''s dream and a mother''s sordid past collide?

Setting and Characters

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.

Sylvie's Dream

At least, that''s what her mother believes should happen. Sylvie, though, has a different dream. She wants to be a star in the new moving pictures, just like the beautiful Vitagraph Girl. When she meets a dangerously handsome Italian boy at church one Sunday and he encourages her ambitions, she begins secretly taking steps toward the career she knows her mother won''t approve of.

Mother's Secrets

But Sylvie isn''t the only one with secrets. Justine has kept her sordid past from Sylvie ever since they came to New York fifteen years before, stitching together a fabric of lies along with the shirtwaists she finishes every day, doing everything in her power to keep the truth from her daughter—that she fled Paris as a courtesan after committing a crime that could still get her arrested, or worse.

Climax and Conflict

When Justine''s past catches up with her in a single act of brutality, Sylvie witnesses what she thinks is her mother''s betrayal and runs away during a freak blizzard, putting them both in grave danger.

Themes

Ambition, survival, and unexpected alliances combine in this mother-daughter story that proves love can conquer all—at a price.