Introduction

The narrator, Ana Roiz, the daughter of a well-known journalist in the city of Recife in northeastern Brazil, accepts from among other choices a final internship, required to complete her degree in psychoanalysis from the state university, in the impoverished hamlet of Guararapes located in a scruffy pocket in the seaside hills nearby.

Initial Experiences

Arriving, she experiences initial rejection from the sad-sack residents. Then she receives as a gift from the like-minded slightly older woman, who is the owner of a local cantina, a crystal ball given her by a traveling peddler.

Gazing into the Past

Anas new subjects/clients line up for a chance to gaze into it in fascination, and astounded, she proceeds to record a long series of their past-life regressions that emerge coming from leading people active in the area during the era of the spontaneous colonial wars to expel the Dutch occupation in the 1640s.

Uncovering a Mystery

Assembling the pieces of information thus gained, while simultaneously attempting to deal with a serious crisis in her own life and that of her traditional family back in Recife, she and Marina, the cantina owner, grapple with a three-and-a-half-century-old mystery of successive murders, managing to save the miniscule town from dispossession and obliteration by developers of a planned gigantic seaside resort sort of.