Wenn Ragazzi sagen: Mamma, schreib ein Buch!

Marlena is born in the 1960s to an Italian guest worker family in Hemer in the Sauerland region. The fact that she is not born a boy is the father's first big disappointment. He promptly gives his daughter to her grandmother, who lives in southern Italy. The little girl's best time of life begins, but it is only short-lived. At the age of six, Marlena is brought back to Germany in a "cloak-and-dagger operation", where her odyssey through the German school system begins. It is not the last time that Marlena's life shifts between the two countries. Her life cannot be told without Valentina and Elisa. The result is an interweaving of three parallel life stories that can't be more different. What unites them all is the ease and love with which they make their everyday life in southern Italy in a foreign country more bearable and hopeful. Encouraged by her children to write these stories, Marlena takes up her pen.