Plot literary genre: drama | Miami, 1980
Main characters
Margherita is a widow and mother of little Roberto, Marco and Alessandro. She lives in a small town in southern Italy, without any support. Now desperate, she accepts the invitation of a childhood friend with whom she has kept in touch. Elena invites her to the States, to Miami, where she lives, to rebuild her life. Margherita accepts, sells everything and with the children flies to America.
When she arrives she discovers that things are different than she thought: Elena and her partner run a shady bar on the outskirts of town and recruit women to exploit. Margherita escapes, but she has little money, speaks the language poorly, and has three children. When a police patrol stops her, it is an officer who will point her to a social worker who might be able to help her. And so she will. Marguerite adapts to menial jobs and impossible hours, and as her children grow up, she does everything she can to keep them off the streets.
The call to adventure
Marguerite consumes her life in an effort to provide a future for the children: by day she works in a laundry and in the evenings she is a waitress in a restaurant. Time passes quickly. The three sons, with very different characters, follow different paths: one becomes a security guard, the other gets by on gimmicks, and the last is a clerk in a store. Life seems to find its own balance, exhausting but peaceful, until the day Margaret faints and is unable to recover.
The conflict
Roberto, Marco, and Alessandro are very close to their mother and would be willing to do anything for her. They were brought up on principles of honesty and honor, albeit in a tough neighborhood in a peculiar city like Miami. The woman needs heart surgery, which is very expensive, and Margherita has no insurance.
For the three men of the house, the question is one: how to get the money? But with no collateral, no one will give them a loan. They have only one solution: to rob the bank where Alessandro is a security guard. Roberto refuses: he has a clerical job and a girlfriend and does not want to risk everything. However, when he realizes that the brothers will not desist and his presence is crucial to success, he will join in.
The key
The three of them devise the plan and amid discussion and uncertainty. They study it for many days until they decide to implement it. But not everything will go smoothly: Marco will be seriously injured and the two brothers will not be able to save him. They will bury the body in the sea so that it cannot be found and return to their mother. With the money recovered, the woman will undergo surgery and recover.
And when she asks where they found the money and what happened to Marco, the brothers will lie: they will tell her that Marco collected the money and then never heard from her again. But many months later Margaret will discover the newspaper clippings of the robbery kept by Alexander, and from the detail of a photo she will understand the truth. She will say nothing, grateful to the three boys.
The alternatives
Endings can be different, happy or not. As always, you can also imagine the story in a different era (for example, move it to the French 1800s) or with exclusively female and very young characters. There is another very interesting way to create an alternative: use the point of view of one of the boys, so that from a child to an adult he follows the family events.
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