Lucia D'Angelo knows her voice will never be as beautiful as her mother's. It will never match the soaring range, peaking and plummeting as surely as the moods of the woman who raised her. It won't astonish a crowd or move them to tears...but her words will.
In 1904, fourteen-year-old Lucia and her mother Theresa are servants in the Naples home of a grand count and countess. There in between scrubbing floors and polishing silver, Theresa soothes their employers with song. Until one terrible moment sends mother and daughter fleeing the household and Italy.
Bound for the heart of America they trade in all they know for the icy lake winds of Cleveland, leaving behind sparkling granite halls for a bustling boarding house of other immigrant workers. In America Lucia can go to school, and Theresa finds the glittering stage of vaudeville. But as the years pass the shadow of Theresa's violent mood swings threaten to overtake the life they have created, Lucia finds her own stage giving voice the people who have given her a home, and mother and daughter struggle to maintain their bond, when roles become irrevocably reversed.
