Tamara sees her aunt being murdered during a powerful earthquake. As she struggles through the natural disaster she may become the killer’s next victim.
Tamara Villanueva, originally from an impoverished town and now a struggling artist in Chicago, has a certain cheerful naïveté that has always helped her through rough patches. But when she goes back to her small hometown in southern Peru, that optimism is challenged. During a massive earthquake that she’s caught in while she’s there, she watches as someone murders her aunt.
When the earthquake is over and the shell-shocked town sits around the next morning not knowing exactly what to do, she cannot seem to convince anyone that her aunt died of anything but natural causes.
The next few months take her on an intercontinental journey of truth seeking. While interviewing the people who knew her aunt best she discovers a rift of corruption decades old that will now threaten the progress and reconstruction of her town. She witnesses the toll, both physical and mental, that the earthquake has taken in ways that a newspaper article could never convey. She needs to decide if the answers she’s looking for will lead to justice - or destroy an already devastated town further.