Las cenizas de Berta

"That afternoon that would change his life, architect Julio Denis went to the riverbank to scatter his wife's ashes. It was winter, and the beach at Sanlúcar de Barrameda was deserted." Thus begins this thriller by Miguel Dalmau, in which characters tormented by a painful past they try to hide move about. As Denis prepares to scatter the ashes in the Guadalquivir River, he thinks he witnesses the murder of a woman on the banks of Doñana National Park. He goes to the police station to report it, but no one believes him. Days later, the discovery of the body of the heiress to a large winery stirs up bitter memories for members of the community. What are the old wounds of Commissioner Marchena? Why does the victim's body bear a strange tattoo? Is there a serial killer among the residents? Here is the enigma that Denis will try to solve with the help of photographer Carla Fantoni. The story unfolds in winter, in a quiet southern village, with the Guadalquivir River as a silent witness to the drama. There, Denis discovers that no one matches his own reality. Everyone hides painful experiences that ultimately converge into a single story, like the river's own course. Beneath the guise of a classic thriller, Dalmau poses profound moral dilemmas. What would we do to live out a forbidden passion, or to return to the past, or to preserve the house where we were happy? Berta's Ashes is, above all, an intense love story for what has been lost.