 Thye story of a strong-minded Polish mother, Halina Nowak (Elzbieta Czyzewcka) who desperately wants her talented son, Jacek (John Cameron Mitchell) to have a life in the free world. On the eve of the Polish uprising, Halina, taking her teenage son with her, leaves her husband in Poland and heads for Washington D.C. where her feisty mother (Viveca Lindfors) and sister now live. Halina, willful and fun-loving, has a gift for life as her son has a gift for music. Although educated, she braves her job as a cleaning woman at a radio station before making the grade to anchor-woman. While Halina embraces her new life to the full, Jacek is employed as a casual laborer Experiencing his first taste of school, Jacek falls in with a crowd of eccentric kids (including a far-out flirt named Mary), he crashes a car and ends up being suspended. Together, with a sense of adventure, mother and son confront a foreign culture gaining a new understanding of themselves and the country they have adopted as their own.