Selma, an earnest Czech woman who adores movie musicals, emigrates to the Pacific Northwest with her 10-year-old son. She finds a job in a pressing plant, interacts with the small town's various residents, and even lands a role in a local production of The Sound of Music while harboring a profound secret: she is on the verge of blindness due to a genetic disorder, and her son will faces the same fate without an operation. Tragedy soon befalls Selma.