Cat sitter, insomniac, former schoolteacher. Ania worries she is a "stand-in occupant," a substitute in her own life. When she receives a request from her father to visit her dying uncle Agustín in Argentina, she makes the long journey across the Andes from Chile to Campana, where her family immigrated from Italy. Her trip, one she used to make every summer with her father, will be an escape from the present and a journey to the borders of memory....

"Alone but for her memories, Nancy has returned to Chile to wait for her cancer to take her away. Before her illness, before her husband's ridiculous death, before she fled home hidden in the back of a truck, she spent her youth at Playa Roja, swimming alongside the creepy old gringos amid rumors of young women gone missing and young men found dead. Nancy's bitter mother--mi madre mala, Nancy calls her--abandoned the family and her brother disappeared...