In the autumn of 1943, the rebels take the father of nine-year-old Kalliopi hostage and a few days later, the sea washes up his body. In the winter of 1945, Nikos' father is murdered by security officers with bayonets. Eight years later, in 1953, Kalliopi and Nikos fall in love and become a couple for a lifetime, where mutual accusations about which party's supporters killed whose father flare up from time to time. The threat of Nikos being arrested by the military dictatorship in April 1967 brings about complete disarray. A few months later, Kalliopi ends up in a psychiatric clinic and undergoes electroshock therapy.

A book about stories that had to remain hidden, that could not be spoken, because no one could bear to articulate them. About the Civil War and mental illness. About stigma, about trauma, about the struggle with our inner demons and the demons outside, about how everything that happens in a country irreparably shakes its homes one by one. And about a teenager, enveloped in the cloud of the unspeakable, who learns to live with madness and loss, oscillating between destruction and creation. But also a book about set family tables with flowers in vases, about soothing music, about books that shape us, about "the thumb of the father to wrap your little palm around and stand up to walk", about the boundless anthology of proverbs of the illiterate grandmother, who saves you in difficult times. About love, about affection, about ideology, faith, reconciliation, and forgiveness, about what makes us resilient and keeps us alive.