Daniel Cunha has a lot on his mind.

He got dumped by his pregnant girlfriend, his grandfather just dropped dead and on the anniversary of the raid that doomed his drug-dealing aunt and uncle, his vicious mother is coming home . . .

Misfortune, however, is a Cunha family affair, and no generation is spared. Not Daniel's grandfather Joao, forced to raise his siblings while still a child himself. Not Joao's wife, Marta, branded as a bruxa and dragged from her home. And certainly not Maria, so envious of her younger sister's beauty that she took revenge and fled to the States, abandoning her children.

But now Maria has returned to finally make peace, or so she says. As New Year's Eve nears, the Cunha family hurtles toward an irrevocable breaking point: a fire, a knife, and a death on the sands of Copacabana Beach.