The time is 1905, New York City: Esther, a black seamstress, lives in a boarding house for women and sews intimate apparel for clients who range from wealthy white patrons to prostitutes. One by one, the other denizens of the boarding house marry and move away, but Esther remains, lonely and longing for a husband and a future. By way of a mutual acquaintance, she begins to receive beautiful letters from a lonesome Caribbean man named George who is working on the Panama Canal. Meanwhile, Esther's heart seems to lie with the Hasidic shopkeeper from whom she buys cloth – and his heart with her – but the impossibility of the match is obvious to them both, and Esther consents to marry George. However, when George arrives in New York, he turns out not to be the man his letters painted him to be. Deeply wounded by the betrayal, but somehow unbroken, Esther returns to the boarding house determined to use her gifted hands and her sewing machine to refashion her dreams and make them anew from the whole cloth of her life's experiences.
New York City, NY; NYC