Where there was fire, ashes remain . . .

Costa Rica, 1968.

A deadly fire rips through the American Fruit Company's most lucrative banana plantation, destroying all evidence of a massive cover-up.

That same night, Teresa Cepeda Valverde’s mother is murdered, and her husband vanishes into the darkness.

Decades later, as a hurricane twists through the streets of Barrio Ávila, Teresa’s estranged daughter Lyra begins to piece together the mysteries lost in the blaze. In her desire to find the truth of her own family's rupture, she uncovers a web of devastating betrayals, stoked by machismo, jealousy and greed.

Costa Rica, 1968. When a lethal fire erupts at the American Fruit Company’s most lucrative banana plantation burning all evidence of a massive cover-up, the future of Teresa Cepeda Valverde’s family is changed for ever.

Now, twenty-seven years later, Teresa and her daughter Lyra are still picking up the pieces. Lyra wants nothing to do with Teresa, but is desperate to find out what happened to her family that fateful night. Teresa, haunted by a missing husband and the bitter ghost of her mother, Amarga, is unable to reconcile the past. What unfolds is a story of a mother and daughter trying to forgive what they do not yet understand, and the mystery at the heart of one family’s rupture, steeped in machismo, jealousy and greed.

Brimming with ancestral spirits, omens and the forces of nature, John Manuel Arias’s extraordinary debut novel weaves a brilliant tapestry of love – lost and found again – and, ultimately, redemption.