It's 1899. An illegal immigrant, Tony LaStoria, just ten years old, an unaccompanied minor, lands in New York and has to make his way in the world's greatest city. Overcoming every obstacle, Tony finds a partnership to last a lifetime in his friend Harry, whose family are Jews from Vilna in the cloth trade. Manhattan, the island, is the Bangladesh of 1905. Together, in the wide-open, unregulated garment industry of that explosive time, the boys manage to become teenage businessmen by the time they're 16. Harry plays the entrepreneur, Tony, his trusted floor-manager, and the only thing that can ever come between them is--a girl named Laura.