The factory lector Antonio reads revolutionary letters aloud to cigar workers, stoking political awareness and catching María Isabel's attention.

After her mother Aurelia dies, María Isabel decides to marry Antonio, viewing the match as her best prospect for stability.

Spanish troops execute Antonio while María is in labor; she names their newborn daughter Cecilia.

Jeanette watches from her window as ICE officers detain her neighbor Gloria outside a Miami apartment building.

Someone drops Ana at her mother's door, and Jeanette takes the young girl in for the weekend.

After Carmen warns Jeanette that harboring Ana could violate her probation, Jeanette reluctantly calls the police to take Ana.

An agent pressures Gloria into signing voluntary deportation papers she cannot read, promising the arrangement will benefit Ana.

After Sasha refuses to go, Jeanette joins a man named Johnson at an all-ages foam party in Miami Beach.

Johnson takes Jeanette to the waterfront and attempts to rape her, but a dead body in the water stops him.

Carmen sneaks into her neighbor's house and discovers a Florida panther locked in a cage in the backyard.

Dolores gets Daniel drunk and murders him with a machete, then burns his body outside under cover of revolutionary celebration.

Young Carmen secretly watches Dolores burn Daniel's body and later flees Cuba as soon as she is old enough.

Jeanette and Mario use Jeanette's tip money to try Oxycontin together for the first time, beginning their spiral into addiction.

After Gloria dies, Ana crosses the US-Mexico border with a group of migrants and takes a train alone to Miami.

Carmen tells Ana that Jeanette died of a drug overdose, then invites Ana to stay and eventually raises her as her own.

The novel opens with María Isabel, the sole female cigar roller in a revolutionary-era Cuban factory, who marries the factory lector Antonio and loses him to execution by Spanish troops the same night their daughter is born. Generations later in Miami, Jeanette witnesses the ICE detention of her neighbor Gloria and briefly shelters Gloria's daughter Ana before being pressured into calling the police. Gloria, alone in a Texas detention center, signs deportation papers she cannot understand, setting off a chain of consequences that will carry Ana across three countries. In 1959 Cuba, Dolores murders her abusive husband Daniel and burns his body, a secret her daughter Carmen witnesses and carries with her into exile. In Miami, Jeanette's addiction deepens when she and Mario try Oxycontin together for the first time, a decision that eventually leads to her death by overdose. Years later, Ana returns to Miami, learns of Jeanette's fate, and finds an unexpected home with Carmen, who quietly takes her in as her own.

The landmark events that carry four generations of women from colonial Cuba to modern Miami.

The factory owner bans Antonio from reading revolutionary texts aloud, so María quits her job alongside him in solidarity.

Antonio teaches María to read and write during daily lunch meetings, slowly drawing her into the revolutionary movement.

Carmen visits Jeanette and insists that Ana is not her responsibility, urging her to call immigration authorities immediately.

Gloria befriends other detained women and becomes absorbed in children's books about birds, a passion the others begin to share.

Gloria learns that Ana has been detained separately and will soon be brought to join her at the family detention center.

Jeanette tries cocaine for the first time at the foam party because she fears Johnson will think less of her for refusing.

After deportation proceedings, immigration officials drop Gloria and Ana off in Mexico rather than returning them to El Salvador.

Gloria tells Ana for the first time why they fled El Salvador, revealing the gang rape and her brother's murder.

Jeanette arrives at Carmen's Thanksgiving dinner and surprises her by announcing that Mario is also coming.

Gloria is diagnosed with cancer while working as a housekeeper in Irapuato, and the disease is already too far advanced to treat.

The German tourist locks himself in the rental car and accuses the Mexican townspeople of sabotaging it as a robbery scheme.

Dolores notices the missing Les Misérables and accuses her Black neighbor Yosmany of stealing it, threatening to call the police.

Daniel discovers Dolores's hidden savings and beats her nearly to death, swinging a machete at her face outside their home.

Mario is caught stealing opioid pills from the pain clinic where he works and loses his job.

Carmen gives Ana the antique copy of Les Misérables, which contains the inscription "We are force" and Jeanette's added words.

María's story deepens as Antonio is fired for his revolutionary readings and she follows him, the two of them secretly teaching workers underground before his death leaves her a widow and single mother. Gloria's months in a Texas detention center expose the cruelties of a bureaucratic immigration system — no lawyer, no Spanish-language forms, and guards who treat deportation as already decided. After Gloria and Ana are dropped off in Mexico instead of El Salvador, Gloria confronts her darkest secrets and quietly builds a new life through hard work and a cousin's help. Jeanette's uneasy sobriety is tested when she brings Mario to Carmen's Thanksgiving dinner, while Ana watches Gloria's cancer advance to a point beyond treatment in Irapuato. Jeanette's Cuba trip exposes casual racism when Dolores wrongly accuses a Black neighbor of theft, and Mario's loss of his pain-clinic job accelerates Jeanette's downward spiral back home. The novel closes with Carmen passing the precious antique copy of Les Misérables to Ana, symbolically welcoming her into a family defined by its buried stories.

The pivotal secondary moments that fill out each character's journey across Cuba, Texas, Mexico, and Miami.

After Antonio is dismissed from the factory, he and María secretly hold revolutionary reading groups for the workers at lunch.

Once María announces her pregnancy, Antonio asks her to stop attending the secret reading group meetings and rest at home.

Jeanette contacts immigration lawyers, neighbors, and the school district trying to find a legal alternative to handing Ana over to authorities.

Gloria risks punishment by covering the barbed wire on the detention center's fences to protect the local birds from harm.

Jeanette slips away from Johnson while he is distracted and hides alone on a side street until sunrise.

Gloria decides staying in Mexico is safer than returning to El Salvador and contacts a cousin to arrange work in Irapuato.

At Thanksgiving dinner, Jeanette confronts Carmen for never truly addressing the revelation of Julio's sexual abuse.

Carmen accuses Mario of hiding drugs at Thanksgiving dinner, but he reveals the bottle contains only an antacid prescription.

Jeanette sides with Maydelis against the paranoid German tourist, and they ditch him to catch a ride with a local named Reinaldo.

After Maydelis falls asleep, Jeanette takes the antique copy of Les Misérables from Dolores's bookcase, intending to pawn it for money.

When Dolores blames Yosmany for the missing book, Jeanette sneaks it back onto the shelf, then confesses what she did to Maydelis.

Maydelis tells Jeanette she had hoped Jeanette would sponsor her move to the US, and their remaining time together turns cold.

Daniel returns from the mountains a more violent man, and Dolores secretly begins saving money and taking typing lessons to escape.

Jeanette meets Mario while in rehab, a connection that later draws her deeper into addiction rather than away from it.

Carmen admits to Ana that she was the one who encouraged Jeanette to call the police on her years before.

The novel's turning points begin in colonial Cuba, where Antonio bars pregnant María from the reading group she helped build, then is killed, leaving her alone with a newborn and a revolutionary inheritance she can no longer share. In Miami, Jeanette exhausts every legal alternative before handing Ana to the police — a decision rooted in fear and practicality but one both she and Carmen will come to regret. Gloria's quiet acts of defiance in the detention center, like covering barbed wire to protect local birds, foreshadow the resilience that sustains her through deportation and displacement in Mexico. Jeanette's Cuba trip becomes a reckoning: she steals a family heirloom out of desperation, covers up her theft when her grandmother wrongly blames an innocent neighbor, and is finally confronted by Maydelis with a painful truth about who Jeanette really is. Back in Miami, Jeanette faces Carmen with the long-unspoken secret of Julio's sexual abuse, while Carmen's confrontation with Mario at Thanksgiving reveals how deeply she misreads her own daughter's world. The novel closes with Carmen confessing to Ana that she pushed Jeanette to call the police — a rare moment of accountability that marks the fragile beginning of a genuine bond between two women shaped by loss.

The decisive choices, secret discoveries, and emotional confrontations that shift every character's path.