"Original title: Storia di chi fugge e di chi resta"--Title page verso.

Friends Elena and Lila have become women. Lila married at sixteen and has a young son; she has left her husband and now works as a common laborer. Elena left the neighborhood, earned her college degree, and has published a successful novel. Both women are pushing against the walls of a prison that would have seen them living a life of misery, ignorance, and submission. Afloat on the sea of opportunities that opened up during the 1970s, they are still very much connected to each other by a strong, unbreakable bond.