Francesca Carrain

Everyone has their own Chimera, something they try to achieve but never manage to find. For Arthur, the Chimera looks like the woman he lost, Beniamina. In an adventurous journey between the living and the dead, between forests and cities, between celebrations and solitudes, the intertwined destinies of these characters unfold, all in search of the Chimera.

Sara, Ester, and Miriam are three sisters who have never left the farmhouse where their father and grandmother raised them. They venerate God because they are an extremely Christian family, and fully respect the dogmas and punishments that the Scriptures, and the Old Testament above all, have transmitted to them. They believe in no intermediary, no Church, and no sacred image: Grandma Paolina rises to all those roles that separate them from the Lord’s grace. Adolescence, however, has brought with it questions and physical transformations that have changed the sisters’ outlooks. The doubt that sin has penetrated into their minds and hands is a legitimate one, and each of them responds differently to their first sexual urges. When tragedy strikes the family and their young cousin Primo is forced to come to the farmhouse, the sisters’ lives are forever changed.

Follow Teresa Iorio, a young woman who leaves her rural Sicilian hometown for Milan to find work--and much more--at a newly opened department store: The Ladies' Paradise.