The "false calm" referred to in the title is Patagonia, an immense cold, ghostly region in which time seems to have come to a permanent halt.

Fiona and Lucas have a secret. It isn't just any old secret but an enormous, gigantic, immense one: the F family (that is to say Fiona and Lucas's family) is part of a witness protection program.

This story recounts half a century in the history of a small city in the north of Spain, from the postwar period in which the protagonist arrives there to work on the railways, up to the present day.