The story is set in the late 1920s as Mexico emerges from its revolutionary era into the Jazz Age. After her father dies, Casiopea Tun and her mother move back to their native Mayan town of Uukumil in the Yucatán, where she grows up as an unwanted poor relation in her wealthy grandfather's house. She is especially tormented by her spoiled, bitter cousin Martín Leyva. At eighteen, Casiopea works as a servant for her grandfather, dreaming of escape.