Part I - Mexico, 1929-31
Salomé has recently left her American husband, an administration accountant in Washington, D.C. for a Mexican attaché she met through her husband’s government work. She has taken their 12 year old son, Harrison (whom she refers to by his middle name, Will) with her to Mexico to live with the Mexican attaché, Enrique. Shortly after coming to Mexico, Enrique begins to lose interest in Salomé and it becomes evident that he will not marry her. She decides to run off to Mexico City with a new wealthy man, a friend of Enrique’s who is married. Will lives with her there in a small apartment in the city and Salomé becomes increasingly frustrated with being a mistress. Will is put into a low-level school and then tries to find work to help make ends meet with his mother who lives on a scant allowance from her married lover. He briefly works as a plaster mixer for the artist Diego Rivera as he is painting a mural at the Palacio Nacional. Shortly after, when Will is 15, he is sent back to America to live with his father, thus ending the first part of the novel.
Part II - Washington D.C., 1932-34
Upon arriving in America, Will is immediately sent to boarding school, a military academy called Potomac Academy. Around this time in life, he begins to go by his first name, Harrison, instead of Will. At the school, he befriends a boy name Billy and begins to realize he is homosexual. It is implied that he and Billy develop a relationship that is at times sexual in nature. The second part ends with a note from Violet Brown, the archivist who has compiled Harrison’s notebooks. She notes that in 1947 she was instructed by Harrison to burn the next journal from his time at Potomac Academy, in order to protect his privacy. The events from that year, 1933-34, are therefore kept a mystery from the reader.
Part III: San Angel & Coyoacán, 1935-41
Harrison, also referred to as “Harry” at times, has moved back to Mexico to live with his mother who now works as a seamstress in Coyoacán. He was expelled from Potomac Academy midway through his graduation year in 1934 and the reasons for this are kept a mystery, presumably lost in the journal that had been burned. Later in the novel, it’s implied it had something to do with his sexual relations with his classmate, Billy. By 1935, he is again employed by Diego Rivera and his wife, Frida, having gone back to work as a plaster-mixer and then as part of the household staff as a cook. During this time, Harrison begins to develop a close relationship with Frida, with her giving him the pet name Insólito, or “Soli” for short.
While he is living with the Riveras, the Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his wife Natalya are granted political asylum in Mexico and the Rivera household becomes a heavily guarded compound. Harrison forms unrequited romantic feelings for Trotsky’s official secretary Van and also begins to perform secretarial duties for Trotsky, with Van eventually leaving for America. Trotsky and Harrison become close confidantes, with Harrison also being inspired to begin working on a novel set in ancient Mexico.
This time of Harrison’s life is equally tense at times and joyous. While the Trotsky’s are always at risk of being assassinated, the group of guards, household staff, and Riveras develop close bonds with each other. Frida embarks on a brief affair with Trotsky that causes a rift in her marriage and tension within the household, but eventually the atmosphere clears.
The third part ends when Trotsky is assassinated in his office at the Rivera household by Jacson, a driver they had believed they could trust, but was actually working for the Russian dictator, Joseph Stalin. The Mexican police confiscate most of the household items, including Harrison’s diaries and the novel he had begun to write. He is then sent by Frida to the U.S. on a mission to deliver some pieces of her art to a museum in New York. She leaves him with one parting gift, which he believes to be a painting, but is later revealed to be all his diaries and manuscripts that Frida has somehow recovered from the Mexican police.
Part IV: Asheville, North Carolina, 1941-47
The fourth part begins with Violet Brown identifying herself as the archivist and Harrison’s former stenographer and confidante. Violet explains that for awhile after arriving in the U.S., Harrison didn’t keep diaries because he was so disheartened at having lost them in Mexico.
After delivering the paintings in New York, Harrison settles in a house in Asheville, North Carolina and teaches Spanish at a college nearby. Due to his experience delivering paintings for Frida, he is hired by the government during WWII to move artworks from galleries and museums to safe locations across the U.S. Finally, after several years in the U.S., Harrison realizes that Frida’s parting gift to him was all his recovered journals, hidden in the guise of a painting, which he had never bothered to open. He is elated and begins writing again. His first novel “Vassals of Majesty” is published shortly after and he becomes a famous and beloved author in America.
Around this time, he hires Violet Brown in order to deal with his masses of correspondence from fans and admirers. When Harrison begins work on his next novel, he brings Violet with him to Mexico to assist with research for his story. Newspapers begins spreading gossip that Violet is his mistress, deeply hurting her sense of propriety as well as inciting a desire to protect Harrison from ill news. Their bond deepens as they both share an abhorrence for gossip and the lies that seem to propel all of the American newspapers.
Part V: Asheville, North Carolina, 1948-50
Some years after the war, America has become obsessed with weeding out any Communist influence in the country. The government begins investigating anyone with any perceived ties to Communist activities, past or present. Because Harrison was once so closely connected to the Riveras, well-known communists, as well as Trotsky, he is investigated by the FBI. Passages from his two immensely successful novels about ancient Mexico begin to be taken out of context and used as proof of his Communist loyalties and ideals. Newspapers turn on him and his once adoring fans begin to boycott him.
Violet must now deal with all his hate mail and he instructs her to burn all of his journals because he is afraid of what kind of false evidence the FBI might take from them. She pretends to do so but instead hides them at her house. His third novel is released and is a failure, boycotted by Americans and critics. Even though Harrison is innocent of all accusations, he is called to testify by the Un-American Activities Committee. After the hearing, he becomes despondent, knowing that criminal charges will likely ensue. Violet suggests he visits Mexico one last time to help cheer him up and he secretly comes up with a plan.
In Mexico, he visits his childhood home in Isla Pixol and fakes his death by swimming through the lacuna he had discovered there as a child. He is presumed drowned by everyone and declared dead.
A few years after the end of Part 5, Frida dies and Violet receives a coded letter from her estate, which includes Harrison’s childhood journal describing the lacunae. Violet realizes then that he had faked his death and was most likely provided sanctuary by Frida in Mexico. Violet decides to have his extensive journals put into safekeeping, to be published in fifty years so that the world would finally know the truth about Harrison, rather than have him be falsely remembered as a disgraced Communist.
