Palermo, 1632. Sofia Teresa Romano is burned at the stake after being condemned by the Inquisition for witchcraft and blasphemy. Her daughter Julia and her Spanish friend María García will be forced to make decisions that will forever mark their lives. In the troubled 17th-century Sicily, while the island is under Spanish rule, the two young women will face numerous dangers, travel, love, and try to define their destiny.

The Inquisition, alchemy, wizards and mystics, Galileo Galilei, Artemisia Gentileschi, Giordano Bruno, the New World form within the book a time full of spiritual conflicts and contradictions. Within this fragile balance, the new Pandora women will have to reopen the ancient box, but this time what will emerge from it will not be misfortunes, but courage, virtue, and the power of love.

"To love and to be loved. Beyond roles, commitments, and rules, beyond intermediations, laws, and interests. This bittersweet ethereal thing, love, can open paths, cross ravines and seas, conquer wounds, fear, and death. This strange power inspired the fugitives, helping them endure hunger, loneliness, and misery. The fugitives lost one homeland and found another, in the depths of a body, in the scent of hair and skin, in the rivers of sweat, blood, and the juices of love. An immense homeland, without borders.

But there were also the unluckier ones, those who could not continue their lives as exiles. Horrible crimes of honor swept across the Italian land claiming young victims. And where their blood flowed, legends were born of haunted girls and trees soaked with innocent blood, until they slowly learned to sing the lament of the unjustly killed. Trees that offered abundant fruits to travelers, so they could eat and be possessed by the souls of the dead, recounting their sufferings in all countries.