Celia keeps nightly watch on her porch swing and senses through the ocean horizon that her husband Jorge is dying.

Felicia learns of her father Jorge's death and makes the seventeen-mile journey to see her mother Celia.

Lourdes receives word of Jorge's death from a hospice nun while working at her Brooklyn bakery.

Pilar catches her father Rufino cheating on Lourdes and spends her savings on a bus ticket to Miami.

Lourdes recalls being raped at knifepoint by soldiers sent to confiscate the Puente family's farm.

Felicia crushes pink tablets into coconut ice cream and feeds the laced dessert to herself and her son Ivanito.

After Felicia's suicide attempt, Ivanito is removed from her home and sent to boarding school.

Celia sends the struggling Felicia to march with a guerrilla unit so she can become a New Socialist Woman.

Felicia abandons her military unit, suffers a major relapse, and loses all memory of her own identity.

Felicia's health fades and she dies in Celia's arms, dressed in the white clothing of a santera.

Jorge makes his final appearance to Lourdes, reveals he had Celia committed as punishment for loving Gustavo, then vanishes.

A botánica owner identifies Pilar as a daughter of Changó, and Pilar resolves to demand a trip to Cuba.

Pilar and Lourdes travel to Cuba and find Celia sitting on her porch, covered in sand and seaweed.

Castro announces Cubans may leave freely, and Lourdes gives Ivanito money and documents to join the mass exodus.

Celia walks into the sea and casts her drop pearl earrings into the water, releasing Gustavo's memory.

Pool 1 covers the headline events of the del Pino family saga, opening with Celia's nightly vigil on Cuba's northern shore as her husband Jorge dies in New York. Jorge's death ripples outward: Lourdes grieves from Brooklyn while Pilar runs toward Cuba, and the traumatic origins of Lourdes's anti-communist fury are revealed through her assault at the hands of revolutionary soldiers. Back in Cuba, Felicia's collapsing mental health drives her to attempt suicide with Ivanito, and Celia's desperate effort to save her daughter through military service fails catastrophically. The second half of the pool moves through Felicia's death, Jorge's final ghostly revelation to Lourdes, and Pilar's discovery of her Cuban identity through Santería. The pool ends in the novel's climactic present: Pilar and Lourdes travel to Cuba, the Mariel Boatlift begins, and Celia achieves her own quiet resolution by casting her pearl earrings into the sea.

The core story of revolution, exile, and a family torn apart.

Herminia invites Felicia to a Santería ceremony where women pray to Saint Bárbara and sacrifice a goat to honor Jorge.

Lourdes tries to phone Celia after Jorge's death but heavy rains have destroyed the telephone lines.

Celia takes her grandchildren Luz and Milagro home to the coast after Felicia neglects them; Ivanito refuses to leave.

Pilar arrives at her cousin Blanquito's house in Coral Gables and hides in the backyard until her aunt finds her asleep.

Jorge's ghost appears to Lourdes on a Brooklyn sidewalk, so vivid she can smell his cologne.

Revolutionary soldiers arrive at the Puente family farm and hand Lourdes a formal decree confiscating their property.

Felicia and Hugo marry during the week of the Cuban Missile Crisis, though Jorge refuses to attend the wedding.

Felicia drops a burning oil-soaked rag onto Hugo's head while cooking, setting him on fire and driving him out forever.

Javier secretly emigrates from Cuba to communist Czechoslovakia, where he eventually becomes a university professor in Prague.

Lourdes patrols her Brooklyn neighborhood as an auxiliary policewoman and radios for help when she spots someone jump into a river.

When a man tries to deface Pilar's controversial Statue of Liberty mural, Lourdes steps forward to defend it.

Javier returns to Celia from Czechoslovakia, devastated that his wife has left him, then disappears again after Celia consults a santera.

Felicia wakes with no memory and wearing a wedding ring, then pieces together that she has married a carnival worker named Otto.

Lourdes travels to the countryside and visits the old finca where she and Rufino once lived before the revolution.

Pilar finds Ivanito in the chaotic crowd outside the Peruvian embassy and silently allows him to walk away.

Pool 2 fills in the significant moments that give the main story its emotional texture, beginning with the Santería ritual Herminia holds to honor Jorge and Celia's strained attempts to care for Felicia's neglected children. Pilar's runaway journey to Miami and Lourdes's vivid encounters with Jorge's ghost on a Brooklyn sidewalk reveal the family's supernatural bonds and the depth of its fractures. The pool traces Felicia's disastrous relationship with Hugo—their crisis-era wedding, Felicia's violent expulsion of him, and her bewildering later marriage to a carnival worker—alongside Javier's quiet emigration to Czechoslovakia and heartbroken return. Lourdes's Brooklyn life is fleshed out through her auxiliary police work and her instinctive defense of Pilar's punk-rock mural, a moment that briefly heals their estrangement. The pool ends in Cuba as Lourdes revisits the ruined finca where her old life was destroyed, and Pilar makes a pivotal private decision to let Ivanito walk free into the exodus.

The supporting events that give each character's story its depth.

Celia plunges into the ocean at night, still wearing her high-heeled shoes, after sensing that Jorge has died.

Pilar wins an art school scholarship but Lourdes refuses to let her attend; Rufino intervenes and builds Pilar a studio.

Jorge tells Lourdes that Pilar does not hate her—she simply has not yet learned to love her.

Celia recalls how Gustavo left Cuba without her and returned to Spain, leaving her devastated and slowly wasting away.

Jorge leaves Celia alone with his hostile mother and sister on Palmas Street, then has Celia committed after Lourdes is born.

Jorge breaks a chair over Hugo's back and warns Felicia that if she leaves with Hugo, she cannot return.

Celia wakes in the night sensing danger and sends her granddaughters to Herminia's house before racing to Felicia.

Celia presides as a neighborhood judge over a sexual assault case and sentences the guilty man to community service.

Luz and Milagro reflect that they call their mother not-Mamá because of her emotional absence and dangerous volatility.

Felicia consults a santero who declares she will never marry again, yet she immediately falls desperately in love with Ernesto.

Felicia deliberately mixes a caustic solution and burns off the hair of a woman she believes is a government informant.

Lourdes stops eating and loses 118 pounds through feverish exercise while grieving Jorge, then devours a full Thanksgiving feast.

After Felicia's death, Ivanito receives a mysterious radio and listens alone on the beach for broadcasts from Key West.

Celia gives Pilar the decades of letters she wrote to Gustavo, along with a cherished book of García Lorca poetry.

Celia writes her final letter to Gustavo, declaring she will never write to him again.

Pool 3 focuses on the turning points and revelations that define each generation of the del Pino family, beginning with Celia's impulsive midnight plunge into the ocean and the lifelong grief over Gustavo's departure that has shaped her entire adult life. The pool uncovers buried history: Jorge's deliberate cruelty in leaving Celia with his hostile relatives and then committing her to a psychiatric institution, and Lourdes's early battle to protect Pilar's artistic identity against her own controlling instincts. It moves through key confrontations—Jorge's furious encounter with Hugo, Celia's composed role as a revolutionary judge, and Felicia's doomed pursuit of a love the Orishas had already ruled out. The final stretch charts Lourdes's grief-driven bodily transformation, Ivanito's lonely vigil with his radio after Felicia's death, and Celia's quiet act of giving Pilar her most private letters. The pool closes with Celia's last letter to Gustavo, her calm declaration that she is finally ready to let the past go.