Sharing the loss of a parent (the death of both of Tina's biological parents and the disappearance of Lou's father), they are increasingly united by Tina's mother's jealousy of her talents, and the physical and emotional abuse to which she subjects her. Lou's uncle has his own plans to be a mob capo, and wants the boy to follow his example. Lou's grand plan is to free Tina from the dreary life of a repressed homemaker her mother has planned, by helping her use her brilliance in physics and mathematics to earn a full scholarship to college - a brilliance her mother refuses to acknowledge.As they grow older, their love, devotion, and inevitable sexual tension grow stronger, while the prejudices and bigotry of their respective families threaten to keep them apart. Yet, ironically, those same obstacles help them disguise the truth from their families, but it all falls apart, leaving them at the mercy of Tina's biological family's moral convictions, and Lou's uncle's manipulation.