The story of three disparate characters swept up in the drama of the Mexican student movement of 1968, the novel moves through time from the main characters' early years in Hungary, Brooklyn and Mexico City, through the years after 1968, including the narrator's move to Canada and work with its incoming Latin American exile and refugee communities. The older Itzel is an Auschwitz survivor who has immigrated to Mexico to join family then renamed herself after the Maya goddess of midwifery, whom the narrator Nauta, a young anti-war organizer from New York meets in art classes. The economics graduate and the narrator's future husband SebastiÔan (Basta), child of a financially challenged single mother, starts out making his living at the Stock Exchange while studying part time for his Master's in economics. The novel's action focuses quickly on Mexico as in the present day Nauta surfs the net to find her old Mexico City apartment then walks herself through Tlatelolco's Plaza de las Tres Culturas where the massacre which ended the student movement took place.