Bernabé Góngora, a fat man with a sweet tooth, is dining pleasantly with friends one night when he abruptly collapses on the table. His body is examined, declared dead, cremated and deposited in an urn; his ghost remains on earth, captive in the restaurant's electric chandelier. Meanwhile his widow, whose life he had always organized for her, is forced to enter the real world on her own. Still young and exquisitely attractive, she must confront men who would seduce her; inexperienced, she must take charge of the furniture shop she has inherited; and without knowing how, she must decide whether she is content in her solitude. This beginning is the excuse that brings us into small-town life in the 1890s, into an age where technological advances appear alongside new scientific and pseudoscientific curiousities. This age is a cross between conservatism and freedom, between conveniences and desires that jump over social classes and good manners.