Rosario Su?rez, an orphan adopted by an American couple, returns to her native village in Guatemala with two missions: to teach in the school, and to find out what happened to her mother, who along with all the people in the village disappeared one night fifteen years ago. The village, Dos Arroyos, is in a region of the country where for many years the military fought a brutal war against guerrillas. Rosario arrives at the mission house of the nun who rescued her when she was eight, and as soon as she has settled into her job as a teacher she begins her investigation. When she starts asking questions about what happened in Dos Arroyos fifteen years ago she is warned by the local landowner, who supports the military, to stick to her mission of teaching, but she continues to pursue her investigation with help from the young doctor at the village clinic. As she finds more and more evidence that the people in the village were massacred, her relationship with the doctor intensifies, and as she unravels the mystery of what happened that night fifteen years ago, she discovers things that challenge her pursuit of justice.