A young girl from a provincial town learns the bitter reality of a big city and great love.

Carrie boards the train to Chicago with big ambitions. She gets a job stitching shoes and her sister's husband takes almost all of her pay for room and board. Then she injures a finger and is fired. This is the 1890s. Charles Drouet, a salesman she met on the train, comes to her rescue and invites her to dine at Fitzgerald's where the manager George Hurstwood sends over a bottle of champagne. She stays in Drouet's apartment, as he will be on the road 10 days. When she leaves the apartment many months later -- on a train bound for New York -- her traveling companion is Hurstwood. Why is he in such a hurry?—Dale O'Connor <[email protected]>

In Columbia Clay, Missouri, the young and naive Carrie Meeber boards the train expecting to meet her older sister in Chicago and have a better life in the big city. While traveling on the train, she meets the fabric salesman Charles Drouet, who gives her his card. Once in Chicago, she finds a simple job in a shoe factory sewing shoes, but when she injures a finger, she is fired. Unable to find another job, she looks for Charles, and he invites her to have dinner at Fitzgerald's, the most expensive restaurant in Chicago, where she meets the elegant middle-aged manager George Hurstwood. Carrie moves to Charles' apartment and becomes his lover due to the lack of options, and later George falls in love with her. Pressed by his wife and by the owner of the restaurant to forget Carrie, George leaves all his possessions behind and embezzles a fortune from the restaurant, traveling with Carrie to New York expecting to rebuild his life, but the shadows of his past are cruel and follow him. Meanwhile, Carrie matures and becomes successful in her business.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil