The story of Edgardo Mortara, a young Jewish boy living in Bologna, Italy, who in 1858, after being secretly baptized, was forcibly taken from his family to be raised as a Christian. His parents’ struggle to free their son became part of a larger political battle that pitted the papacy against forces of democracy and Italian unification.

Emma is a child and adolescent psychotherapist, a sixty-year-old woman with a gentle smile and a kind gaze. Every day, she welcomes children and teenagers into her office, where they express their discomfort and their "difficulty in living."