If this story were not true, no one would believe it. Four-year-old Mario Capecchi is the son of an anti-fascist American woman, Lucy, who is arrested in Northern Italy in 1941 and sent to Dachau. Abandoned by all, the boy fights his way through street life rummaging through rubbish for five years to survive. Surprisingly, Lucy too survives, and after the end of World War II, somehow finds her son. She takes him back to the States and there, thanks to the love of two extraordinary women - Lucy herself and Mario's aunt Sarah - the illiterate, half-wild child is finally reintegrated into society after many setbacks. Moreover, years later he even receives the Nobel Prize for Medicine...