This is a story of sheep and skyscrapers, of hills lined with olive-trees and avenues brilliant by day and night. It is a story told in Italian by an old toothless granny, and in English by a New York con man looking for easy money. It's a story seen through the big eyes of a young drifter, searching for a home for her yet unborn child. It's a story of cons, misunderstandings, mistaken identities and chases, of fathers long gone, and mothers without husbands. It is a story of dreamers and overachievers, all looking for love. It's a story about two sisters, Angelina and Suzanne.
Suzanne is beautiful and rich, strongwilled and independent. It has been 15 years since, as a young girl, she left her family in Tuscany, Italy, to come to New York, where she now owns a famous and successful casting-agency.
Angelina is the younger sister. Although shy and reserved, she is very sweet and has a heart of gold. She still lives on the old family-farm in Tuscany, with her younger brother, who believes he is Jesus, and her paralyzed, toothless granny who always cries. "She just cries... for years now... ever since she was hit by a tractor..."Their widowed mother Roberta is very energetic, but energetic to the point of neurotic. Her neuroses make her children crazy, and cause everyone in the little Tuscan village to fear her. None of the farmers will work for her anymore, "just hearing her name out loud, makes all the workers run".
This story begins one early morning on the farm, when the sheep escape from their pen. They end up on the farmhouse roof destroying, not only the roof, but breaking all the tiles as well.This is the last straw, Angelina cannot take it any more, "This place is a nut house!" She wants to leave, to discover the world, as her sister did many years ago, "It's time I live my own life." No more responsibilities, no more crazy mothers. "I mean it Suzanne, she isn't just my mother, she's yours too, you take care of her."
Suzanne, efficient and business-like as always, doesn't waste time finding a solution. She organizes a casting-call, looking for an honest, middle-aged actor, for a very well paid life-time job: to be their mother's new husband. "... I'm sure, that with love and a companion at her side, she'll be able to relax and stop this neurotic behavior that keeps getting her, and everybody around her into trouble..."
Unfortunately, things do not go as planned. Instead of the actor hired to marry their mother, a young con man from New York takes both the actor's place and the plane to Tuscany, Italy where the rest of the story unfolds....