Ten-year-old Monica lives with her mother Icelia and her mother’s brother, Albert, in Toronto’s Portuguese quarter. Monica’s mother has recently split up from her husband and works as a cleaner. Monica’s uncle is unemployed; he’s supposed to look after Monica but he prefers to spend his days watching videos. Monica dreams of being an angel, or, if she can’t be a real angel, at least an angel in the Lady Day procession that is due to march through “Little Portugal”. But even this proves beyond her dreams when Monica’s teacher informs her that all available pairs of wings have been distributed among the children and there are none left for her. Desperate to take part, Monica steals a pair of wings from the church, but manages to lose them on the way home. She doesn’t find them again until much later, on the back of a slightly deranged homeless woman named Mary, who has got it into her head that she’s the Holy Virgin in person. Believing that now is the time for her to go to heaven,Mary is convinced that all she has to do is cross several bridges to find her place at her son’s side once more.
Monica follows hot on Mary’s heels and, as the vagrant woman wends her way across the city, she gets to know her much better.Watching the local television news one day, Monica learns that the police have arrested Mary and she has been committed to a psychiatric clinic. Monica steals away from home – as she has done so often recently – and goes to visit Mary at the clinic.However, this time,Monica’s mother is on to her; she lashes out at her daughter in fury. Uncle Albert is terribly sorry about the whole affair – after all, he was supposed to have been keeping an eye on his niece. In order to make up for his mistake, he decides to set off in search of the wings. However, just as Monica, clad in her wings, is about to take her place in the procession, she comes to the realisation that Mary needs her much more...