Karin, a displaced Lithuanian in Italy, escapes the internment camp by marrying an Italian fisherman, a prisoner of war, whom she met in the camp on the other side of the barbed wire. He promises her a great life on his home island of Stromboli, a volcanic island located between mainland Italy and Sicily. She soon discovers that Stromboli is very harsh and barren, not at all what she expected, and its very traditional and conservative inhabitants treat this strange, foreign woman with hostility and disdain.