The writer Alberto, supported by his wife Elsa, is writing a novel centered on a common woman from Ciociaria, Cesira, during World War II. The story begins in Rome in 1943, where Cesira is having her teenage daughter Rosetta visit a doctor who, traumatized by the recent Allied bombing of the city, has shut down in total silence. The woman decides to take refuge in the native country of Sant'Eufemia together with her daughter to escape the air raids and the atrocities of the war.