Built on fragments of memory, the story of a young girl's intuitive struggle for survival in the malevolent political and social environment of Haiti under Papa Doc Duvalier in the 1960s. Eight-year-old Sarah's father is a discredited army officer. He and his wife are forced to flee their small rural town by Janvier, a vicious Ton Ton Macoute strongman. They leave behind Sarah and her two sisters. The children are entrusted to their grandmother, who risks her life to secure them from Janvier, now bent on revenge and dedicated to the new regime. The story is narrated thirty years later by an adult Sarah, whose memories are haunted by nightmares of the man by the shore who put and end to her childhood.