A tale of generations of Dominican women. Graciela is an adventuress who comes of age during the U.S. occupation but is too poor to live her dreams. Her daughter Mercedes grows up to manage a shop during the Trujillo dictatorship and emigrates to New York with her husband and granddaughter Leila. Leila has inherited Graciela's recklessness, but her freedom carries its own obligations and dangers.

"When celebrated writer Alma Cruz inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, she turns it into a place to bury her untold stories--literally. She creates a graveyard for manuscript drafts and revisions and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her. Alma wants her characters to rest in peace, but they have other ideas, and the cemetery becomes a mysterious sancctuary for their true narratives."--...