Expelled from her convent school for kicking the prioress, and abandoned by her father when her mother dies, rebellious teenager Matia is sent to live with her domineering grandmother on the scorching island of Mallorca. There she learns to scheme with her cousin Borja, and finds herself increasingly drawn to the strange outsider Manuel. But civil war has come to Spain, tearing communities apart, and it will teach Matia about the adult world in ways she could not foresee. This feverish 1959 coming-of-age novel by one of the greatest Spanish writers of the 20th century depicts Mallorca as an inferno, a lost Eden and a Never Land combined, where ancient hatreds and present-day passions collide.