During a sunlit Florence vacation with her mother, Meg Johnson meets 26-year-old Clara Johnson Naccarelli, an American woman whose childhood head injury left her with a mental disability. Clara quickly captures the heart of Fabrizio Naccarelli, a warm-hearted young Italian, who sees her simple, candid remarks as innocence rather than disability. Fabrizio’s family is drawn to Clara, and her straightforward, unguarded statements are often interpreted as evidence of her blissful naïveté.
Meg struggles to explain Clara’s condition to Signor Naccarelli, but the moment never seems right for such a confession to reach him. Meanwhile, Fabrizio and his relatives are charmed by Clara, and her childlike outlook becomes a kind of charm that softens their doubts, even as Meg worries about what could happen if the truth ever came to light.
To shield Clara from potential heartbreak, Meg hastily moves their summer into a Rome escape, hoping Clara will forget Fabrizio. But Clara’s happiness deepens, and when Meg realizes how unhappy Clara would be if forced apart from Fabrizio, she reaches out to Noel Johnson, Clara’s tobacco executive father, asking him to come to Rome to meet them.
In Rome, the couple’s future becomes a topic of full discussion. Noel reminds Meg that Clara’s earlier suitors backed away once they learned of her condition, and he reveals a plan to place Clara in an expensive care home. Meg vehemently opposes what she views as a life sentence for her daughter, torn between protecting Clara and recognizing the social advantages of a life as a wealthy Italian wife with servants and social standing. Yet, after weighing the options, she decides to pursue marriage rather than separation, hoping this path will offer Clara a fuller life. She returns to Florence to speed up the wedding, concealing her actions from Noel.
Clara’s path toward marriage also involves a religious dimension. She begins a sincere Catholic conversion, and the priest guiding her is impressed by her devoted, almost childlike reverence to the Madonna. The Naccarelli family’s deep connections within the Catholic Church help tilt the balance in favor of the union, and the wedding date is set.
A moment of doubt arrives when Signor Naccarelli glances at Clara’s passport and confronts the age difference: a young man their age difference would be controversial in Italian culture. Fabrizio insists that his own age—23—puts him close enough to Clara for him to care little about the discrepancy. The crisis is eased when the dowry is raised from $5,000 to $15,000, and the still-rising warmth of Clara’s disposition appears to win Signor Naccarelli over even further. A subtle tension remains as Signor Naccarelli attempts to proposition Meg, but the moment ends without a resolution.
The wedding is celebrated in a Florence church without Noel’s presence. After the ceremony, Meg confronts a past wound when the Signor mentions a man who was wounded in a firearms accident and later died. Outside, the bride picks up a wedding candy that was tossed to her by well-wishers and puts it in her mouth, and when Fabrizio repeats the same gesture, Meg quietly acknowledges that her decision to pursue Clara’s happiness was the right one.
