An Argentinian girl, about to turn 18, leaves on a study trip to New York, and then decides to stay there. Her caring father goes after her to get her back before her mother can get too worried.

A coming-of-age story about an eleven-year-old girl who idolizes her troubled sixteen-year-old neighbor.

A gallery of characters in Brooklyn in the 1950s are crushed by their surroundings and selves: a union strike leader discovers he is gay; a prostitute falls in love with one of her clients; a family cannot cope with the fact that their daughter is illegitimately pregnant.