It's 1945. In post-war Spain people are ready to leave the bad times behind and there is an air of optimism and progress. But not for Isabel. When she refuses to say who the father of her unborn baby is, she must accept her brother Jaime's decision for an arranged marriage. Her hopes and desires, and her idea of the perfect love, are banished when she meets her sombre husband, Jacob Kantor, a German with a dark past, who, following the rushed wedding, whisks her away to the family farm in the country. Isabel, far from the familiarity of upper-class parties and society, has to adapt to the simplicity of rural life and the loneliness to which she has been condemned.