Santiago and Ofelia Alcalar—Cuban-Americans who live in Ybor City, Florida in 1929—are the owners of a cigar factory steeped in Cuban tradition. They eagerly await their new lector, Juan, who will read to the factory workers as they roll cigars. The family is happy when he arrives, but this happiness soon wanes as he begins to read Tolstoy's Anna Karenina to the workers. The workers become either empowered or discomfited as the scandalous lives of the characters in the classic Russian novel are a little too close to their own lives for comfort. As in Russia, where the bitter cold leads families to implode under the weight of financial woes and marital discord, in an oppressively hot Florida summer, the same effects seem to be occurring. For example, Santiago and Ofelia argue fiercely about Santiago's gambling, which early on in the play causes him to lose a great deal of money (and factory shares, to boot) to his half brother Cheché, a dastardly northerner who wants to mechanize the factory's labor force. Their son-in-law Palomo, married to their daughter Conchita, has been cheating with another woman; Conchita meanwhile begins an affair with Juan Julian, which both liberates her and ushers her into an independent period of self-discovery. Their other daughter, Marela, becomes absorbed in fantasies of the cold Russian winter and falls madly for both Anna Karenina and Juan Julian. Finally, Cheché—still angry with his wife after she ran off with the factory's previous lector—attempts to take over the factory, get rid of lectors, and usher the factory into the modern age.
As Juan Julian continues to read to the workers from Tolstoy, they begin to connect, argue, and reconnect in new ways. Using Levin as a model of devotion both to work and to one woman, for example, Santiago is able to reconcile with Ofelia regarding his debts and returns to the factory to confront Cheché about his planned changes for the cigar factory's future. After beginning her affair with Juan Julian, Conchita becomes a bohemian and sees the shameful necessity in taking on a lover like Anna did—that is, in order to learn to love one's self and see one's self as a woman again. Later, she even reconciles with Palomo by speaking to him transparently about her affair with Juan Julian and what she likes about sleeping with him—a luxury that Palomo denied her earlier in the play. Marela, for her part, gets to realize her fantasies when Santiago's return to the factory is accompanied by the launch of a new cigar line—called Anna Karenina—for which she poses on the label. This, however, has the unintended consequence of attracting the desperate Cheché's affections, which she sternly rebuffs. Finally, by learning from Juan Julian about why Anna takes on a lover in the novel and why Anna's husband responds as he does, Palomo is able to quash his jealousies by the play's end and become the husband that Conchita needs him to be.
Towards the play's end, the Alcalars celebrate the launch of their new cigar brand. At the festivities, Cheché continually asserts that Anna's husband should have killed Vronsky if he cared about Anna. Palomo and Juan Julian contest this claim, but it has no effect; later, Cheché gets very drunk and possibly assaults Marela (he grabs her, and the lights black out). The next day at work, Marela is clearly shaken and Cheché is late, but he does not arrive until Juan Julian has begun to read from Tolstoy's novel again. Specifically, Juan Julian reads a passage in which a duel involving Anna's husband is being discussed. Just after he reads a section about how killing another man over a woman makes no sense, Cheché ironically shoots him. Three days later, the silence caused by the absence of his reading is deafening for Ofelia. She wants to continue the reading aloud, and Palomo agrees to take Juan Julian's place. He reads about Anna's husband and looks at Chochita as he reads, saying, "In his letter he was going to write everything he'd been meaning to tell her" (84). This underscores that, though the family has suffered a tragic loss—parallel to the loss of Anna in Tolstoy's novel—Palomo has learned to be transparent and tender with his wife from the experience, and he is willing to take on the role of Juan Julian in her life now (i.e., as a lover and a reader). In short, while the Alcalar's ending is not positive, it also carries an educational note that keeps it from being strictly negative.
