After two years of living in São Paulo, Hermila returns to her village in northeastern Brazil with her newborn son, anxiously awaiting the arrival of her husband. Time passes slowly and the wait becomes an even heavier burden as she begins to realize that she's been abandoned. Her distress increases as she renews a relationship with an old boyfriend before deciding that she doesn't want to relive the past. Determined to raise enough money to escape her stifling hometown, she comes up with an unlikely prize to raffle off--one conceived during her chats with newfound friend and local prostitute, Georgina. Hermila adopts the name Suely, an act that distances her from her family and her past and signals the beginning of her journey toward new, open horizons.