The story focus mainly on Maria do Carmo, a poor immigrant from the northeast who becomes a successful businesswoman in Rio, raising four children single-handedly along the way, while never giving up the search for the fifth, a daughter kidnapped as a baby.

In 1968 Maria arrives in Rio de Janeiro from the northeast, with her five small children in tow. She comes to the city in search of her older brother, who emigrated to the city years earlier, and works as the chauffeur of a newspaper owner. Her arrival coincides with a clampdown by the U.S.-backed military dictatorship (1964-1985) and the repression of the student movement that turned the streets of Rio de Janeiro into a battlefield.

Maria is arrested and jailed, her newborn daughter is snatched by a prostitute who uses the baby to force her lover to marry her, Maria's other children are sent to an orphanage, and the newspaper is shut down.

The action shifts forward several decades to the present. The poor immigrant is now a prosperous business owner on the outskirts of Rio, her journalist lover is trying to reopen the old newspaper, and the search for her daughter is moving toward its final denouement, mirroring real events that took place in 2002, involving a family from Goiania, in western Brazil.

The various groups of characters whose lives are brought together by the soap serve as a vehicle for exploring the issues that affect the inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro and its outskirts, including domestic violence, drugs, crime, and young people rebelling against the rigid moral strictures or elitist snobbery of their parents.

The soap also features a subplot about Rio's famous samba "schools", a highlight of the city's world-famous carnival. The sponsor of this particular school is the head of an illegal but tolerated lottery, who is striving for recognition as a respectable businessman.