The majestic and haunting beauty of the Italian alps is the setting of the first meeting of enza, a practical beauty, and ciro, a strapping mountain boy, who meet as teenagers, despite growing up in villages just a few m...The majestic and haunting beauty of the Italian alps is the setting of the first meeting of enza, a practical beauty, and ciro, a strapping mountain boy, who meet as teenagers, despite growing up in villages just a few miles apart. At the turn of the last century, when ciro catches the local priest in a scandal, he is banished from his village and sent to hide in America as an apprentice to a shoemaker in little Italy.