Teresa, a poor seventeen-year-old girl, longs for love and independence, but her mother sends her to America to follow a man her mother had forced her to marry.

On shipboard, a girl dies and Teresa assumes her identity. Unfortunately, the girl had been on her way to meet for the first time her fiancée and his controlling mother. Does Teresa fool them?

Teresa's mother insists that love and independence are only for the rich and will lead to pain. Is she correct? Can this penniless immigrant in a strange, hostile new world overcome her difficulties?

Seventeen-year-old Donna wants to be an artist, but her controlling father insists that she become a concert violinist. He tells her that marriage will interfere with her career.

Donna dreams of finding someone like Robert Browning who will love and rescue her. She meets Raymond who seems to fulfill her dreams. Will he? Will her dreams become a nightmare?

Donna is from a middle-class family during the 1900's. She must deal with societies' intolerance, prudery, and bigotry coupled with stringent old world family values.