Diego is a survivor of the holocaust that decimated the Asháninka people in the Peruvian Amazon, carried out by the Shining Path from 1989 to 1992. At five years old he is adopted by Bernardo and Alicia, an upper-class couple who live in Spain. Beyond Sadness tells the story of a family through its own narratives, how they try to build their family and integrate Diego in a society unwilling to welcome difference. The novel penetrates their conscious and reveals the pain that infertility can cause a couple, the concealed side of international adoption of children from other races, the relationships between them and their parents, the damage that child abuse and school bullying can cause in the psyche of teenagers and the consequences they bear as adults, and redemption through forgiveness and love.