In the first part, a detective fiction writer in London receives a letter from his mother, who has died three months previously, saying she has left some handwritten pages in a trunk in the attic, revealing aspects of her life that he knows nothing about. It is up to him whether he wants to read them. It is the year 1890, and Amaro Carreira leaves his village in Galicia and boards an ocean liner that will take him to Argentina. On board the ship, he meets Gabino, another eighteen-year-old, who introduces him to his family so that he no longer has to eat alone. Gabino and his father, Dionisio, say they are leaving everything behind, they are going to reinvent themselves, learn everything anew. In 1923, Carlota, a girl of fifteen, starts a course of teacher training lasting four years. She is not in agreement with the teacher over the course taken by Spanish history, and thinks it would have been better if the French had won the Peninsular War, since this would have introduced more liberal ideas into Spain and avoided the hundred years of discord that followed the reign of Ferdinand VII. Her teacher is not impressed by her opinion. An orphan girl, Maribel, is adopted and taken to a house where there are strict rules and the parents are of the opinion that people should maintain their social position and do what they are told. The housekeeper, Hilaria, tries to help Maribel, but the parents are not pleased with her and end up returning her to the orphanage. A schoolteacher, Anxo Daponte, is invited by a colleague, Martín Rocha, to his home to meet his family. In the library, he sees they have a lot of foreign books, in English and French, and Martín says it’s not enough just to know your own language to keep abreast of artistic and philosophical ideas. Anxo then goes out with Martín’s friends, they discuss things, but Anxo only dares to give his opinion from time to time, in a quiet voice.
Two fellow students, Regina and Estela, come up to Carlota and say she was right to say what she did. They become friends, and Regina and Estela start visiting Carlota in her ample house, reading her books and sharing her passion for the cinema and theatre. Due to the influence of a Chilean friend, Amaro has ended up taking work as a navvy building the railway to Santa Fe, but he misses Buenos Aires, where he also has a girlfriend, the only problem is he can’t kiss her because she’s only fifteen and also her elder sister has shown an interest in him. The writer has a meeting with his editor, Terry Cox, who is impatient for another novel from the series starring the detective Gilbert Murray, which has been so successful for everybody concerned, but the writer informs him that he has come across some papers of his mother’s, revealing aspects of her life he knew nothing about, and he would prefer to write about this. Maribel works in a bookshop. All the men who come in are of a certain age, and she wonders whether any young, unattached men have any interest in books until one day a medical student called Fernando comes in, asking for a copy of La Regenta, which at that time was on the list of forbidden books. But Maribel has a copy, which she lends him. It is the second year of their teacher training course, and a new girl, Annabelle, has arrived from France. Carlota and Annabelle become good friends. Annabelle’s father is a famous painter in France, and Annabelle invites her to her house, where her father takes photos of Carlota and says he wants to paint her portrait, and where Annabelle’s younger brother, Christophe, thinks Carlota is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen.
At a birthday lunch for Dionisio, Amaro, who has started work as a milk deliveryman, is offered a job by the owner of a newspaper, Don Baldomero. But the job is not as a journalist, it is as a gardener. He goes to the owner’s house, where he is introduced to the owner’s father, Don Olegario, who ends up wanting him to leave his other jobs and to be his personal assistant, reading to him from the newspaper. Anxo Daponte is eleven and has just left school to go and work on his father’s fishing boat. He endures this for a year, but realizes that this is not the work for him. It is another deckhand, Fontán, who tells Anxo’s father that he is not suited to this life. Carlota and her friends form a club. They go to stay at Annabelle’s house, where they go swimming every day and Annabelle’s father paints her portrait. Two years have passed since Carlota’s first visit to this house, she is now eighteen and Annabelle’s brother, Christophe, is sixteen. He confesses his love for her, and they kiss. Maribel has given up hope of ever being adopted, but a couple come and take her home, where they introduce her to her new sister, Carmen.
In the second part, after the death of Don Olegario, Amaro gets a job in a leather tanning factory, but he’s not content just to do his part of the process, he wants to learn all the different parts and buys some books on chemistry so that he can study them at home. The writer visits Galicia, wondering what to do with the bookshop his mother, Maribel, had owned. His mother has asked that one employee, Elena, be allowed to continue working in the bookshop until she retires, which is in another three years’ time. The writer goes to his mother’s flat and starts to read through some of the papers in her study. Carlota has other suitors, but her interest is centred on Christophe, who has told his parents about their relationship. He says in France there is no need to hide these things. After reading extensively and consulting with his work colleagues, Amaro goes to visit his boss to suggest a different approach, which involves heating the skins to a higher temperature. At first, his boss is astonished at his boldness, but then he agrees that there may be something in what he says. Maribel continues lending Fernando books from her personal collection that are officially forbidden. She would like to see more of Fernando and tries to provoke him with her opinions. Fernando informs her that his father is a cobbler. Maribel is surprised that the son of a cobbler can study medicine at university.
Carlota starts work as a schoolteacher in a village, Cantelle, where most parents have children so that they can help them in the fields and look after them when they are old. She tries to instil in her pupils a love for knowledge and the practical application of that knowledge. She divides the pupils into teams so that they work together; to avoid unhealthy competition, they get extra points for helping pupils from another team. In the village where Anxo Daponte lives, most of the children stop going to school at ten and start to help with fishing or working the land, but Anxo’s mother, Amparo, wants him to continue studying, to go to secondary school in Pontevedra and then to university in Santiago de Compostela. When at the age of ten he continues going to school, he feels the accusatory looks of the neighbours, but prefers to shut himself up at home and devour Plutarch’s Lives. Unfortunately, his mother dies of a heart attack in 1910, and he is taken home from school. Amaro is appointed manager of the leather tanning factory, takes on more responsibility and prepares to marry his girlfriend, Adriana, the younger of the two sisters. The boss of the factory, August Johansson, enjoys sharing conversation with Amaro after work, he talks about his family, the village he comes from in Denmark, how he came to Argentina at seventeen and set up the factory. One day, however, August Johansson doesn’t turn up to work: he has died of a heart attack the previous night. Carlota needs help at home, she doesn’t enjoy the housekeeping in addition to her teaching and her hobbies of painting and reading, so she hires a woman from the village, Filomena, who soon becomes an intimate friend. She confesses to Filomena that she is from a rich family. Filomena is surprised, since the women she has met from rich families were not at all like her.
As a child, the writer preferred to spend his time in his grandparents’ house in Sanxenxo than with his mother. There, he could play with his cousins, Pablo and Rubén, who were younger than him, looked up to him and obeyed all his orders. He envied them their family life with their parents, Carmen (Maribel’s sister) and Román. Fernando comes back to the bookshop, invites Maribel out for a drink, confesses how much he misses her when he is studying in Santiago and asks if she will be his girlfriend. Amaro meets with August Johansson’s widow, Gabriela, and tries to persuade her to sell him the leather tanning factory, otherwise he will leave and set up his own business. She needs time to think about her answer. Filomena tells Carlota how when she was sixteen she went to serve in the house of the doctor in Vilanova. Friends and family would come round, including the doctor’s nephew, Antonio, a law student in Santiago. By the time she was nineteen, he was attracted to her. Filomena became pregnant, as a result of which she was dismissed and became a single mother.
In the third part, Anxo Daponte falls ill on board his father’s fishing boat. He is taken to Pontevedra and diagnosed with measles. He spends several days in the hospital, where first his father keeps him company, then his uncle and aunt from Santiago, who invite him to come and recuperate in their house. Anxo makes it clear that he would like to stay with them and to study, just as his mother had wanted. His uncle goes to talk with his father, who agrees to let him do this. Maribel and Carmen’s grandfather is delighted to have them over to his house, where he likes to play board games with them and to read to them from a book. But the one thing their father won’t allow is for them to play cards. He doesn’t think this is suitable. Seven years have passed, and Amaro has become a very rich man. He bought the leather tanning factory, employed two efficient accountants, who suggested he needed to make contacts in the world of politics if he wanted to expand. What Amaro wanted was his own ranch in the Pampas, and the best way to get this was from the Argentinian army. He became friends with an Argentinian general, who got him a ranch and suggested he supply the army with horse tack. Amaro has become a member of an exclusive club, where an acquaintance attempts to introduce him to the director of a newspaper, Don Baldomero, whom Amaro fails to recognize. Carlota feels that the passion has gone out of her relationship with Christophe and she ends it. At the beginning of her second year in Cantelle, she discovers that Filomena doesn’t know how to read. She teaches her for two hours each day after school, and then decides to extend this teaching to all the adult women in the village who haven’t had a chance to learn to read and write. A lot of women turn up to the meeting to discuss this, but when it comes down to the actual lessons, Filomena is sceptical. She thinks as soon as the women get home to their husbands, sons and housework, they will give up on the idea. In London, the writer is divorced. His ex-wife is going to New York for a month and a half and wants him to look after their daughter during that time. The writer is concerned that this will interrupt the rhythm of his work. He realizes that his poor relationship with his daughter is similar to the poor relationship he himself had with his mother.
Maribel’s father is not very permissive and wouldn’t approve of her relationship with Fernando, so they must keep it a secret. One day, Maribel travels to be with Fernando in Santiago and they kiss. Maribel says she will never love anyone else but him. Amaro is now married to Adriana, Dionisio’s younger daughter. They have two daughters of their own, Sara and Carlota. Amaro has been very successful in business, but he is overcome by a feeling of apathy. Adriana thinks it’s because he achieved success too quickly. To escape this feeling, despite their close relations with Adriana’s family, they decide to move back to Galicia and to settle in Pontevedra. Carlota’s classes for adult women are a real success and she has gone from three to forty pupils. The women are happy to learn new things, even when Eulalia joins the class, a single mother who left her husband because he drank and beat her. Carlota is so happy with the progress that everybody has made she doesn’t notice there may be trouble ahead. Anxo Daponte is invited to a café by a teacher at the school where he works, Castelao, who introduces him to some colleagues, all of whom speak in Galician and defend the idea that Galicia has a history of its own, not just as part of Spain. They encourage him to write about the history of Pontevedra, and Anxo does this, gathering information and filling in the gaps. He publishes a series of Minimal Stories of Pontevedra in a publication called A Nosa Terra, which are well received. Maribel is fifteen and is forced to go out with Carmen and her friends, who are obsessed with a young man who works in the local savings bank, Diego González. Their walks are dictated by where he might be, they follow him around, hoping he may pay them attention. But the one he pays attention to is Maribel, whom he accompanies home on a rainy day. Carmen is annoyed with her for letting him do this.
Filomena and Eulalia inform Carlota that some people in the village are not happy with her for teaching the girls so many things. In particular, the priest comes one day to rebuke her for fomenting discord in the village and for disturbing the status quo with her theories about the evolution of man, dinosaurs and the capacity of women to take decisions. The writer invites his daughter, Sheila, to read the first few chapters of his new novel, in which he describes his complicated relationship with his mother and the kind of strange character she was. This serves to break the ice between them. When she visited Galicia at the age of thirteen, Sheila had managed to establish a warm relationship with her grandmother since they both spoke French and could communicate. She is surprised by what she has read in her father’s novel. Back in Galicia, Amaro buys some land in Pontevedra and opens a theatre, cinema and bookshop. He particularly enjoys selecting the films (only the ones he likes, never with a view to making money); the choice of plays is more limited since there aren’t that many theatre companies passing through Pontevedra. He leaves the bookshop in the hands of a capable manager called Tomás, who will later be Maribel’s colleague. Maribel pays Fernando a surprise visit in Santiago. She discovers that he is distributing clandestine leaflets that protest against Franco’s dictatorship. He also confesses that his studies are being financed not by his father, the cobbler, but by his uncle, who has a grocery store in Santiago, both of whose sons were killed in the Spanish Civil War. Carlota finds out that there is a petition in the village to have her removed from her duties. The school inspector comes to tell her she must follow the official syllabus and omit all references to the equality between men and women and the evolution of man.
