On a small, imaginary island off 19th-century Sicily, when the 'Thousand' have landed to reunite Italy, Angela, 25, loves Sara and seeks to ride out the scandal over her own homosexuality by disguising herself as a man. Shut up in a cave by her father, a tyrannical paterfamilias, when she refuses an arranged marriage, Angela is saved by a trick her mother cooks up: she convinces the curate to change Angela's name and sex on her birth certificate. That's how Angela turns into Angelo: sporting a cap and a cigar, and a picture-perfect family. An intense examination of the frontiers of identity as well as geography, the story interweaves fact, legend, and poetry and re-evokes an ancient scandal lost in time.