In August 1926 the wealthy Laparra family are enjoying a day on the beach in Biarritz. Magdalena Laparra takes her two children and walks into the sea with the intention of drowning herself. Her seven-year-old daughter, Elsa, realises something is wrong and manages to escape, but her little brother is drowned. Nobody understands what madness had affected Magdalena, the daughter of a successful Basque businessman, and married to an ambitious tycoon who relocated his family to his business in Cuba when Elsa was born. In 1944, now 25 and fleeing a broken marriage, Elsa leaves Cuba and returns to Biarritz in search of the truth that has been kept from her for so many years. There she not only discovers her family's darkest secrets, but becomes involved in a precarious love triangle with a German officer and a shady fisherman. Elsa must finally learn to take the reins of her own destiny.