Brazil National Literature Prize winner Iara Oliviera Rosa lives north of Rio de Janeiro in a small colonial town on the Atlantic coast named Buzios. In a not so distant past, the town was surrounded by banana plantations and once harbored a clandestine port nearby which was known to bring slaves secretly into Brazil to avoid paying the high slave trade taxes demanded by the government at official ports, such as Rio de Janeiro.

Iara's grandfather was brought to Brazil as a slave from Africa. He worked in the plantations around Buzios and apparently died at the age of 114. A woman of incredible knowledge and energy, Iara is a very rich source of Brazilian folklore. Dramatizing the pains and glories of the colorful lives of the locals of Buzios, her descriptions resemble those in Steinbeck's "Cannery Row."