Adaptation of Bernard Malamud's story set in a 1949 Jewish community of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Pragmatic shoemaker Feld and his wife dream of a better life for their daughter Miriam. Feld arranges a match between Miriam and Max, a local college boy, without knowing that Miriam is more interested in the shoemaker's assistant Sobel, a Holocaust survivor who is 16 years her senior.