Ciro and Enza’s storylines trace how life’s challenges, disappointments, and surprises can fuel an individual’s self-discovery journey. Both Ciro and Enza are adolescents at the start of the novel, and both know hardship. Ciro’s father died when he was a child, and his mother left him and his brother at the convent shortly thereafter. Meanwhile, Enza is “overly concerned with adult problems” (27), as she’s desperate to support her parents and siblings in every way possible. She not only tends to her siblings but also helps her father bring in money to cover the rent. When her younger sister Stella dies, Enza is even more burdened by life’s sorrows. These experiences challenge Ciro and Enza to seek truth, meaning, purpose, and contentment with particular ardor. Each of them wants a happy, rewarding life, but is unsure how to pursue such a future without their loved ones and away from their country.

The main characters’ journeys from Italy to the US intensify their self-discovery journeys, thrusting them into challenging new circumstances that place physical, emotional, and mental demands on them. Enza sometimes wonders “what it would be like if she lived in another place at another time, with another family, fulfilling a destiny different from her own. Who would she be? What might she become?” (42). Such questions resurface throughout her story. Each new place she visits, friendship she makes, or challenge she faces influences her worldview and tests her character. Ciro’s experiences similarly impact how he regards himself, his past, and his future. In particular, his experience serving in World War I reminds him of his personal values and helps him remember who he is as an individual: “Ciro [has] learned that life [is] never better after a war, just different” and he “[has] not survived the Great War to return home the same man” (303, 304). In light of these internal changes, Ciro revisits his priorities and desires, deciding that the “only thing worth dying for” (305) is Enza.

Enza’s experiences with Vito Blazek give her similar clarity on what is meaningful to her. In this relationship, Enza temporarily convinces herself that she wants a life of ease and independence with Vito: She accepts his marriage proposal because being with him feels like the ultimate act of autonomy. However, when Ciro finds her after the war, just in time, she realizes that though she has changed, she needs a connection to her home and family to feel genuinely happy. Being with Vito gives her a taste of a different life and identity (much as the war does for Ciro), but it ultimately reminds her of who she is and what she wants. Together, Enza and Ciro authenticate one another’s truest natures, fuel one another’s self-determination, and find contentment.