Teacher Elena Bardi transfers herself from Sondrio in a Sicilian town, where she is harassed by a man without anyone intervening. The next morning he is found executed. Elena finds lodging with a lawyer named Bellocampo, who is an enigmatic landowner who knows all the unmentionable secrets of the city. At school Elena clashes with the difficulties of school evasion, while her non-conformism prevents her from tying up with her colleagues, except with Professor Belcore, with whom she starts a relationship, which he does not dare to make public. One day Bellocampo leads her to the poor neighborhoods of the city where school evasion originates and informs her that the degradation could be eliminated with the approval of a law firm in Parliament.