After twelve years in exile, living and teaching in the safety of Montreal, Alma Alvarez has been persuaded to return to Luscano by her old friend Flaco, who has invited her give a lecture at his university on the tragic Uruguayan poet Delmira Agustini, a writer with a cult-like following known for her erotic poetry and film noir demise.

Having been arrested herself after the publication of a poem which offended the military regime, Alma knows how influential and dangerous poetry can be. But her mother is dying, and her return to Luscano feels inevitable. She soon discovers that life in Luscano is still rife with secrecy and duplicity. And Flaco turns out to have a hidden agenda as well. As Alma attempts to readapt to a country that, despite its seductive charms, may not have broken free of its brutal past, she catches sight of the man whose actions prompted her exile and begins to follow him in secret.

The imaginary country of Luscano, an amalgam of Uruguay, Argentina and Chile, is vibrantly brought to life with a nod to the region’s literary tradition of magic realism.

Enrique Job shows her the tickets he purchased yesterday, two passages to Buenos Aires by boat. "Please, Nena, think about it. We could—"

"Put them away." She stands by the mirror and unbuttons her dress, letting it slide down her silk slip. Delmira steps out of the dress and sits on the sofa bed to remove her shoes. Enrique Job lights a cigar. Perhaps he tries one last time to dissuade her.

If so, the argument is short. "Where is it?" she might ask, with the poet's urge to see, to concretize. He removes the nine-millimetre-calibre Smith revolver from a drawer in the nightstand. If she has masterminded this scene, she must have compromised on the modus. Her verses foreshadow a beheading, smother and, most often, poisoning, a spider's poison, pill of delirium or divine poison, but the macho horse-trader must have drawn the line. She loosens her hair and lies down on the sofa bed.

Less than half an hour after Delmira Augustini entered her ex-husband's room, two shots are heard, a pause, and then two more.