La Giara begins in Sicily in 1909, when adolescent Nunzio Minissale’s imperious cutting in line at the town water fountain leads to breaking his aunt’s giara —the water jug. This incident unleashes a lifetime curse that crosses the Atlantic from Sicily to the New World, in Philadelphia. La Giara becomes a symbol of the family's rupture and its eventual reunion, challenging three generations of Minissale women.

Nunzio thinks he wears the pantaloni in his family until he instigates an incident that prompts his wife and two daughters to disappear suddenly. Leaving behind their successful family bridal business they use aliases and take a cross-country train out West.

When the now wealthy and determined Nunzio finally locates them, he learns that his “bimbas” are more resourceful than he imagined. Desperate to win them back, Nunzio purchases an impressive mansion where he creates a seemingly charmed lifestyle. However, their fairytale palazzo, full of mirrors, fountains, opera, and singing birds, becomes a gilded cage that the Minnisale women long to escape.

In this inspiring story, long-shattered relations are eventually healed by Nunzio’s grandchildren, who discover that la giara, their symbolic container of traditions—some broken, some lost, some retained—has endured the cracks and damage caused by the patriarch of their troubled Sicilian family.