After spending his life in Montreal, a man returns to Chile. His father has died, and he has gone back to pay his last respects.   It isn’t long before he realizes that those who choose to leave their homeland are not necessarily welcome when they return. A kind of misunderstanding hovers over the rooted and the uprooted that makes the latter’s return impossible – especially in this Jewish family that has crossed countries and continents and ended up at the edge of the world in southern Chile, a land of boundless generosity and unspeakable cruelty. The ancestral land of the Mapuche, a green expanse of eucalyptus at the foot of the snow-peaked Llaima volcano, becomes the battleground for the different peoples who live there.   In this short novel, structured like a thriller, Mauricio Segura explores in contemplative and moving prose the elusive and irrevocable bonds that tie people to the land. The tragic quality that haunts the story sharply delineates the fate of the characters and the conflict between different cultures, different age groups, and different continents.