This lush romantic drama depicts a family of cigar makers whose loves and lives are played out against the backdrop of Depression-era America. Set in Ybor City (Tampa), Cruz imagines the catalytic effect the arrival of a new "lector" (who reads Tolstoy’s "Anna Karenina" to the workers as they toil in the cigar factory) has on a Cuban-American family, and celebrates the search for identity in a new land.