In a colonial society that could be any and none, Tom lives with his father and his dozens of servants in the immense family property they took when the first settlers arrived in that land, more than forty years before. The farm is the only world that Tom knows. Everything, including the relations of domination with his servants, is as natural as inevitable. That is why, when he listens to an incendiary speech on the radio, haranguing the natives against the white oppressor "he barely understands the words, they sound like guttural nonsense." The precarious balance of an environment that has begun to change without their being able to notice it is altered with the arrival of Carine, a girl destined to be Tom's wife, with whom the father soon establishes a fierce love triangle in a Desperate attempt to cling to a power that no longer belongs to you. By masterfully intertwining the collapse of two worlds, the colonial and the family, Katie Kitamura has captured in her novel the idea that colonialism is primarily a mental phenomenon. The explosion of a volcano covers everything from ashes that make breathing difficult, and both Tom and his father, the girl and the servants try to stay afloat, encouraged by fear of the unknown and by the uncertainty of the world they will find once the wind has blown with the force necessary to take away the ashes.