Christopher Swaim, a U.S. soldier who is the son of an American serviceman and a Trieste woman, recognizes his parents in a 1954 shot by photographer Ugo Borsatti. In the photograph, an American soldier kisses a girl by leaning out of the window of a departing train and lifting her off the ground. That soldier's son, after recognizing in the two lovers his father and mother, arrives in the Friuli Venezia Giulia city after 40 years to meet the photographer.

Theirs is one of the many love stories that marked the arrival of the Allies to liberate the country from the Nazis. Young U.S. soldier James Swaim, originally from a small town in Arizona, and Graziella from Trieste meet because the latter, in order to earn a few pennies, does laundry for the U.S. military.

They fall in love but in 1954 the Us Army stationed in Trieste, nine years after the end of World War II, leaves the city, returning it to Italy. Graziella goes to the station to bid farewell to her soldier. They kiss, while the other soldiers at the windows seem not to notice the passionate scene.

It is not a farewell. James and Graziella would marry in November of that year, in Livorno, Italy, and, after various travails, go to live in the United States.

It is Christopher, born overseas in 1956, two years after that kiss, who tells their story today. After their marriage James and Graziella go to New York. The son will follow in his father's footsteps by enlisting in the army and arriving stationed in Italy, in Vicenza.

The discovery of the photograph immortalizing his parents in 1994 triggers in him a desire to meet the author. Thus it is that Christopher, with the help of a cousin, travels to Trieste to meet Borsatti, with whom he will become friends. James and Graziella's story will also be the subject of a documentary, which is in the works.