Publisher Annotation: Madrid, 1941. Fernando, Catalina, and Eulogio have grown up together in a Madrid neighborhood near the Encarnacion convent. The Civil War has just ended and they are all attempting to overcome the pain it has caused in their lives and those of their loved ones. Fernando lives with his mother, Isabel, awaiting the release of his father, who has been jailed for his republican ideals, and counting on a pardon that never comes. Catalina lives on the same street as the convent. Her family has been ruined during the war, and, to face their debts, her father intends to marry her to a man for whom she feels nothing. Eulogio is the one who has lost the most due to the war. His father died fighting, and he himself was crippled from a heroic act in which he saved the life of Marvin, a young U.S. Hispanist who arrived in Spain in 1936 to study Golden Age literature and later decided to stay and capture the pain of war in a famous poetry collection. The future prospects seem ever bleaker for the three young people who decide to unite their destinies and start a new life far from Madrid in order to save what little they have left. Spain, 992pp.