Summary

The novel begins with a brief section entitled "The Missing." This vignette takes place in an examination room in San Salvador's Instituto de Medicina Legal where corpses and skeletal remains are being examined. Many of the bones have been exhumed from the site of a 1981 massacre during El Salvador's civil war while other remains are from the more recent violence in the country which is the result of powerful gangs. People arrive at the Instituto to report missing people and a teenager under arrest for gang activity arrives for a psychological evaluation before going to jail. The courts are so backed up that he could be in jail for months or years before a trial and he too becomes one of the country's missing people.

Chapter 1 begins in the year 2008. The 12-year-old Flores twins were playing poker on the town soccer...