Can the story of an eccentric family become a symbol for a country or an era? Humor and tragedy combine within these pages to form a portrait, at once scathing and sentimental, of a not-so-typical Spanish family, and the story of their fall. This narrative is intertwined with a story seemingly worlds apart: Johann Sebastian Bach's famed 350-kilometer journey on foot to take the place of his former teacher. Together, it is an escape formed through fiction.