The 21st of February of 1874 the Carlist army surrounds the city of Bilbao. In this besieged city are Javier Garay, a photographer of erotic postcards, and Inés Otaola, an unemployed presser, to whom hunger will force to be Javier&...
The 21st of February of 1874 the Carlist army surrounds the city of Bilbao. In this besieged city are Javier Garay, a photographer of erotic postcards, and Inés Otaola, an unemployed presser, to whom hunger will force to be Javier’s model.
However, Javier's aspirations do not happen to stay in the besieged city but to act as a war reporter for the most important newspapers in the country and achieve the success he has always wanted. The occasion comes when the liberal government proposes the possibility of infiltrating behind the enemy lines and he takes advantage of it without hesitation. What he does not imagine is that Ines will drag him to the battle field with him.
Meanwhile, Ines, who was expelled five years ago from the family house with her grandmother and her brother, never imagined that she would return home, much less without them. Nor did she suspected that the photographer would be her opportunity to run away from the destroyed city to return to the place where she was born.
In the midst of destruction, both become the refuge of the other. However, the war and the suspicions of the military will manage to separate them.
A perfect portrait of the aspirations and failures of men and women from the end of the nineteenth century, a pacifist allegation in a time of changes where photography becomes a witness of horror and passion.
A widely documented novel signed by an author who works in the world of archives and who has access to a profuse documentation on the era she portrays.