In 1954, after going into exile in 1939 and being taken in by Dr. Goldstein's family for 15 years, the young psychiatrist Germán Velázquez returns to Spain to work in the women's asylum in Ciempozuelos. There, Germán meets Aurora Rodríguez Carballeira, a paranoid, intelligent woman who murdered her own parents, and a young assistant, María. Attracted to Maria, Germán cannot understand her rejection and suspects that her life hides many secrets. The reader will discover her modest origins as the granddaughter of the asylum's gardener, her years as a maid, her unhappy love story, as well as the reasons Germán has returned to Spain. Soulmates who want to escape their respective pasts, Germán and María aspire to give themselves a chance, but they live in a beaten-down country where sins become crimes, and Puritanism covers up all kinds of abuses and outrages.