Ana, a new employee in Reza's cafeteria, has high spirits that thaws Reza's joyless life in Zurich.

Mariana brings her two children from Colombia to New York to reunite with her husband, only to be abandoned by him. Desperate and alone, Mariana must find a way to survive and care for her family.

Circus saxophonist Vladimir Ivanoff suddenly defects from his touring troupe in that temple of "Western decadence"--Bloomingdale's. Fleeing the K.G.B., Vladimir wins asylum and moves into the crowded Harlem flat of Black security guard Lionel Witherspoon. Though Vladimir learns that life in America can be cold and even painful, he grows to love this strange and wondrous new land.

In 1846, waves of Irish immigrants poured into the New York neighborhood of Five Points. "Billy the Butcher" bands his fellow "Native Americans" into a gang to take on the Irish gang "The Dead Rabbits," organized by Priest Vallon. After a bloody clash Vallon is dead and his son ends up in a brutal reform school. In 1862, that boy returns to seek vengeance against the man that killed his father.