There's nothing like two pretty American girls to take Daniel Cunha's mind off his troubles: getting dumped by his pregnant girlfriend; his cirrhotic grandfather dropping dead the day before; the looming anniversary, on New Year's Eve, of the raid that doomed his drug-dealing aunt and uncle; and his long-gone mother, escaped to States with another American fool like his father. But a cold bottle of cachaça and a pair of flirty turistas to is all Daniel needs to feel like turning up.
Misfortune, however, is a Cunha family affair, and no generation is spared. Not Daniel's grandfather João, born to a prostitute and forced to raise his siblings while still a child himself. Not João's wife, Marta, doted upon by her father but reviled by her mother, branded as a bruxa - a witch - and dragged from her Ilha paradise by her scheming daughter, Maria. And certainly not Maria, so envious of her younger sister's beauty and benevolence that she took her vicious revenge and fled to the States, abandoning her children, Daniel and Lucia, both tainted now by their half-Americanness and their mother's greedy absence.
But now Maria is returning to Rio with her doltish husband and teenage stepdaughters in tow, and as New Year's Eve nears, the Cunha family hurtles toward an irrevocable breaking point: a fire, a knife and a death in the sands of Copacabana Beach.
