Melilla, the nineteen fifties. Faced with the decolonisation of Morocco, the Spanish inhabitants of the Protectorate are forced to return to the Iberian Peninsula. North African Hebrews hope to stop this exodus by installing themselves in the recently created state of Israel. In this context of uncertainty, a middle aged couple worry about their future and that of their two children. The husband, Samuel, is a Sephardic Jew; his wife, Mercedes, is Catholic. In this saga, which continues into the eighties, the author explores family conflicts, the value of secrets and the persistence of the past. La buena reputación is a novel about inheritance. Inheritance in the strict sense because the lives of the characters are determined by a will. But also in the wider sense, because all their fates are written down in a pre-existent dialectic in which it is hard find a place.