The protagonist, a young woman who is the daughter of Sicilian emigrants, lacks the fundamental paternal figure, who died prematurely. Because of this experience, she feels the fascination of nostalgia for places, out of time, and of people who in her homeland (Sicily) bring her back to the improbable adolescent search for a companion, much older than her. This person will appear to her as a substitute figure for her charismatic and successful father, ultimately compensating for her own emotional insecurities.

This, at first, will take her away from an interior and loving balance, making her alone, as a victim of an idealization, precisely: “a fantastic mistake.”

After so many amorous failures, however, there will come a turning point that will take her back to the centre of her life.