When bookish young American Sylvia Beach opens Shakespeare and Company on a quiet street in Paris in 1919, she has no idea that she and her new bookstore will change the course of literature itself. It will be more than a bookstore and lending library: Many of the prominent writers of the time like Ernest Hemingway consider it a second home. And when James Joyce's controversial novel Ulysses is banned, Sylvia takes a massive risk and publishes it under the auspices of Shakespeare and Company. One woman's triumph over censorship - based on facts.