Struggling author David Martin, upset over losing his lover to another man and trying to find success, takes an assignment to write a book that the editor promises will make him immortal and is thrown into a web of long-buried secrets, double-crosses, and madness.

Nine-year-old Alicia lost her parents during the Spanish Civil War when the Nacionales (the fascists) savagely bombed Barcelona in 1938. Twenty years later, she still carries the emotional and physical scars of that violent and terrifying time. Weary of her work as an investigator for Spain's secret police in Madrid, a job she has held for more than a decade, the twenty-nine-year old plans to move on. At the insistence of her boss, Leandro Montalvo,...