Lucia Sartori is the beautiful twenty-five-year-old daughter of a prosperous Italian grocer in Greenwich Village. The post-war 50s boom is ripe with opportunities for girls with ambition, and Lucia becomes apprentice to an up-and-coming designer at a chic department store on New York's Fifth Avenue. Engaged to her childhood sweetheart, Lucia is torn when she meets a handsome stranger who promises a life of uptown luxury that career girls like her only read about in the society pages. Forced to choose between duty to her family and her own dreams, Lucia finds herself in the midst of a sizzling scandal in which secrets are revealed, her beloved career is jeopardised, and the Sartoris' honour is tested.