Content Warning: This section of the guide includes descriptions of suicide, sexual assault, domestic abuse, and substance use and addiction.

In a letter addressed to someone named Camilo and written in September 2020 at Santa Clara, Violeta states her intention of leaving a “testimony” of her life. She believes her life story is worthy of a novel, and the recounting of it is meant to replace the many letters she has sent Camilo in the past. Violeta signs off declaring she loves Camilo more than anyone in the world.

Violeta Del Valle is born in 1920, the year the Great Influenza pandemic reaches her country. She is the youngest of six children, with five older brothers; her oldest brother, José Antonio, is 17.

Arsenio Del Valle, Violeta’s father, had anticipated the pandemic’s arrival, and was prepared for it when it hit their country. He follows the advance of the virus through the newspapers’ reporting of it and believes it responsible for a greater death toll than the Great War in Europe. Most European countries censor their reporting of the actual death toll; only Spain, which remained neutral in the Great War, reports freely about the pandemic, leading to the moniker the “Spanish flu.