Out of a Coloured Box: The Broken Shoes Tale

In 1960s London, class, race, and gender matter-a lot. Magda Moen, a Costa Rican immigrant, learns this hard truth after her husband abandons her and she has to move into rundown housing with other migrants. There she's mocked for everything from her skin color to her language. Magda isn't a quitter, though, and she turns to education to get back on her feet. At a college for adult learners, she meets Rosanna Sullivan, a professor of literature who takes a special interest in her. But when Magda embarks on a friendship with Rosanna-who happens to be white-her troubles multiply. To white Londoners, Magda and people like her are misfits. The community of migrants has its own set of unwritten rules and prejudices-and associating with a white woman is the biggest taboo of all. Magda and Rosanna continually struggle with conventions that seem designed to keep them apart, but they are irresistibly drawn to each other. Eventually, however, reaching across the vast "them and us" divide grows too difficult. When the two women's paths cross again in 2012, old wounds are painfully reopened. But now that their love is no longer forbidden, can their relationship be mended?