Across the Down Squares

Emily at 19 is unemployed, unskilled, and a lonely single mum missing the strength of almost-husband Henry, but his French family had forbidden marriage to the common likes of Emily, and by 1933, Emily is floundering on the bedrock bottom of her life in the golden state of California during the Great Depression. Unwed Emily, shunned by her religious father, is getting desperate and too destitute to buy adequate food for her infant son Danny, until Emily meets a foster mother named Anna. Childless Swiss couple, Anna and her usually out-of-work, drinker husband Ernst, grow to love Danny and soon consider adopting him, but Anna makes the mistake of introducing Emily to Silvano, a Sicilian immigrant impatient to get rich in America. Then the careful plans of each person in this small-town multi-cultural epic dissolve, unravel, and shift as the economy slowly improves, and these alterations bring about stresses to Emily, Anna, and Ernst, and to the concern of their cheerful neighbours, Mexican braceros, or stoop laborers. When Silvano announces his plan to move Emily and Danny away to a big city to open a business, Anna feels her heart is about to shatter, especially after Emily rejects her dream. Anna and Ernst realize the happiness of their family of three is soon to be torn apart, and they dread the coming of that disastrous day. Emily makes a promise to Anna that settles their stormy feelings, for a time, but at a great cost. Then the insane madness of another war begins.