Caught up in the pandemonium of carnival, the roguish and irresponsible Vadinho dos Guimaraes dies during a parade, leaving behind his long suffering wife, the irrepressible Dona Flor. As a widow, Flor devotes herself to her cooking school and an assortment of interfering but well-meaning friends who urge her to remarry. The lonely widow finds herself attracted to Dr Teodoro Madureria, a kind, considerate pharmacist, who is everything the reckless Vadinho was not. Yet after their marriage, though content, Flor longs for her first husband's amorous, and exhausting, sensual pleasures. And Flor's desirous longing is so powerful that it brings the ghost of Vadinho back from the grave - right into her bed.
