An American family disintegrates after a daughter is killed in an Italian terrorist bomb in 1980s Bologna. The mother enters a convent, the father has an affair with the daughter of his mistress, the remaining children leave. The climax comes when the father meets the woman who placed the bomb and discovers what prompts people to become killers.

"Here is the story of two families in small-town Basque country, pitted against each other by the ideology and violence of the terrorist group ETA (Basque Homeland and Liberty), from the unrelentingly grim 1980s to October 2011 when the group proclaimed an end to its savage insurgency. Erstwhile lifetime friends--especially the generation of parents on both sides--the two families become bitter enemies when a father of one is killed by ETA militants,...